


Villains and Heroes

by TechnicalZombie



Series: Villains and Heroes [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Gen, Other, Tumblr: Writing-prompt-s, super heroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:33:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 39,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25053193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TechnicalZombie/pseuds/TechnicalZombie
Summary: These chapters are being re-written! find the completed works here! https://archiveofourown.org/works/25979869/chapters/63160000
Series: Villains and Heroes [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1814566
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	1. That Time You Almost Died Saving Your Nemesis/Crush From Certain Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You’ve always been put under the role of Resident Villain in your city, and you take your job of fighting the “good guys” seriously even though you don’t have any powers of your own. Even while antagonized, you make friends with the citizens and have a connection to the city’s Superhero.
> 
> Write what happens when a real supervillain almost kills the hero, and you’re forced to fight for your city instead.

_**The Menace** _

The supervillain, he calls himself The Darkness[stupid name], stands over your hero, gloating. Your hero! This guy just shows up ranting about how your hero isn’t really a hero and he’s gonna prove it, with all the subtly and nuance of a freight train.

And then she has the poor taste to get pummeled by this…this wannabe goth chad? Fuck that.

“Now, false hero, you will-”

**_FWAKOOOOMMMM~!_ **

The _actual_ freight train engine strikes the villain full on, expertly aimed [you’ve been mimicking telekinesis with magnets for years] to miss the hero by inches. It plows into the street, with the villain as a hood ornament in the same way a butterfly becomes a hood ornament, for a good fifty meters before stopping and exploding.

You step up next to the fallen hero. Your long black coat billowing behind you[it would billow even if there wasn’t wind from the explosion], deep hood shrouding your face[and your Augmented Reality goggles] in shadows.

Your hero looks bad; broken arm, shoulder, clavicle, and ribs, probably a host of internal traumas and multiple concussions. You’ve never seen her in this state and you once fought her with the help of a squad of super-soldier alien mercenaries from the Andromeda Galaxy.

Good times.

She’s still conscious too. Fuck she’s tough. Nothing ever knocks her out.

“Hey.” She wheezes, “Come to gloat?”

“Maybe later.” You don’t bother with the voice enhancer; she knows your real voice these days. The revelation was quite dramatic. “Don’t go anywhere.”

There’s a crash as the remains of the engine are tossed aside by the ultra-strong villain. You begin walking towards him, slow clapping, while keying your vocal enhancer. A handy littler device for long distance monologues during mid-air pauses in battle, when the wind and a few city blocks would drown out a normal human voice.

 _Clap…clap…clap…_ You stride forward, dramatically unconcerned by the burning wreckage around you.

“Oh…very well done.” Your voice sounds like a slightly discordant chorus, an indeterminate number of voices reverberating from all around you.

He glares at you and it gives you a moment to review what you learned while he was fighting your hero. While you were frantically gearing up. Stronger by a factor of five at least. Seemingly impenetrable skin. Immune to heat up to 1500 degrees Celsius. Immune to being doused in liquid helium. Fires beams of some kind of plasma from his fists. It’d cost a third of the city’s industrial sector to learn all that. As he stands there in a black bodysuit with armored plates the fires around him seem to die faster than those near you.

That’s interesting.

“Who are you?” He snarls.

“You come to my city, destroy my property, and you don’t know who I am?” Your voice reverberates so powerfully several concrete walls finish collapsing from the vibration.

Your AR is scanning, the q-crypt link to your super computer allowing instant analysis of the data, while a voice in the back of your brain is screaming “fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck” to remind you that coming in person was a mistake and you should have sent a mimic drone even if he might have spotted that. But you were thinking about Megamind and feeling brave and those two combinations always get you in trouble.

“I heard this city was plagued by a menace who fought this hero” he spits, “with relentless tenacity. I assume you are he?”

“Not a he.” You correct.

He rolls his eyes, “She, then.”

“Not a she.”

He looks perplexed for a moment. “But what’s betw-” _ **BOOM!**_

The sonic boom drowns out the sound of the I-beam slamming into him from directly above at Mach 3, driving him deep into the earth, through so many utility lines and some subway tunnels.

You look down, towards where he should be, there’s the heat bloom. Your magnetic array pulses and yanks you to the side at 3 gees, your stomach churns but the beam of plasma misses your body, singing your coat, and its millions of sensors. You watch the beam sweep up past you, with your AR goggles. By the time he erupts from the pavement you have your answer. The micro-fusion pack begins warming up, circuitry comes to life as the prototype you were planning to put through another six months of testing gets ready to fire. You really hope it doesn’t explode this time. And, as you rise from the pavement into the air, to face your waiting foe, you’re pleasantly surprised to find you’re not a cloud of monoatomic dust within a few seconds.

Yes. Things are going exactly as planned.

“I see we cannot come to an accord.”

“Sorry, I’m usually less terse. No time to prepare a speech today.”

“You think this a game, fool?!”

“No, it’s a play.”

His fist begins to glow, you raise your hand, pointing at him with a finger-gun. A silly gesture you programmed to activate the prototype. You were planning to think of something cooler later. No time now.

He throws his punch. You drop your thumb. And the rest happens in an instant.

A magnetically confined stream of nearly fusion hot protons rushes from his fists towards you. It will strike your chest full on. When it does, your magnetic rig, powered by your little reactor, will capture the stream, redirect it, and pass it through the compressor rings of the prototype, into the fusion reactor, capturing the new fusion energy as heat and radiation, converting the heat into electric power for the full spectrum laser, channeling the additional radiation to supplement the laser, focusing it through the tiny gravity lenses around your forearm, aimed at the villain’s chest.

For a nano-second, seven pinhead sized beams of every kind of radiation, from microwave to gamma, pierces the villain’s chest.

Light. Electromagnetic radiation. That was the answer your AI returned to you. It tuned the amplitude of the lasers to match the kinetic absorption field, which your AR goggles had detected and you tested only once, and pierce his impregnable “skin”.

Then the superconductors all melt at the same time. The emergency breakers flip and your magnetic disperse the plasma beam. This cuts out the “fly” function and you fall. You hear but miss seeing the villain scream in rage and pain. He’s distracted long enough for you to fall thirty feet to the broken pavement. And then the pavement isn’t the only thing that’s broken.

Your arm, a couple ribs, thank the gods not your clavicle, your armor and other bones absorbed enough of the impact. Your vision is red, you can’t breath right. You hear a thud, then footsteps, you see black boots approaching, You roll onto your back to see his face, but you can barely make it out through the haze. He’s definitely bleeding though. Wheezing too. You were hoping for dead though.

Now he’s standing over you. You wonder if he’ll smash your head with his boot, or just kick right through your chest cavity.

So much for your clavicle.

He coughs, spitting up blood. “I see this is a city of idiots. I’ll gladly wipe it from the map while you two, broken and dying, watch.”

He starts to turn and you gasp, “Wait.”

“What?”

“Don’t…don’t you want to know…”

“Know what?”

“Know…what’s between m-” _**POW!**_

The fist the slams into the side of his head blazes with swirling golden light. Then she’s standing over you. Gold and silver particles of light swirling around her, white hair floating like it’s in zero gee, golden eyes shining, her dark skin without blemish or flaw, apparently uninjured in every way.

She touches you with her boot and energy flows through you, washing pain way, knitting bones in seconds, clearing your vision. You manage to stand.

Embedded in a building is the villain. One eye shot with fresh blood, he spits teeth as you stand, and drags himself from the masonry.

“Ha…how?” He sputters.

“You know that saying, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’. Ever hear that?”

“Silly…pseudo-psych garbage.”

“I dunno about that, but…for me, it’s literally true.”

There’s a flash of light, you see a streak of gold and silver fire leading to the villain, and another POW that shakes the buildings. Then the villain is embedded in another wall, unconscious.

That’s when you both collapse.

—————————------------------------------------------------

You wake up in your cell.

It’s your cell of course. They’re all your cells, really. But since the city can’t decide whether to put you in the men’s section of the prison or the women’s, especially not after you sued them for discrimination, you get your own block of cells and private yard. You share sometimes too.

When you sit up, she’s waiting for you, just outside the cell, in a folding chair.

No silver and gold light now. No dramatic zero gravity hair. It’s just her in her practical, black and white, armored body-suit. You can see the faint shimmer of the privacy field. A very neat and useful trick she can do with her powers. Something you helped her learn, before she learned who you were.

“So,” She says, “That was a thing.” Her voice is velvet now, not tinged with pain and rasping.

“How’re you feeling?” You ask.

“Stronger than ever. He’d be an even match for me now, if he ever broke out of containment. Funny thing about that. The containment team got a huge cache of data about his powers sourced from a very high resolution multi-spectral sensor suit.”

“Weird.”

“Must be a good citizen at work.”

“Must be.” You agree.

Silence.

You wish she would keep talking. You love listening to her. It’s half the reason your bait her into banter during your battles.

“Why?” She asks.

You smile coyly. “Cuz I love you.”

She rolls her eyes and gets up to leave. “Fine, don’t be serious.”

“See you at dinner.”

A silly condition of your confinement. A promise to cause no trouble in the prison so long as the hero joins you for dinner once a week. She doesn’t reply as she leaves.

You sigh as she goes and you flop down onto your extremely expensive, extremely comfortable, prison bed.

“I am being serious.” You whisper.

————————————————–-------------------------------------------------------

_**The Hero** _

She waits until she’s a hundred feet in the air before she lets her expression show.

“Ugh, fuck…” she sighs, slowly rotating until she’s upside down.

 _They’re a villain._ She reminds herself. A criminal.

She wishes their banter didn’t so often reveal the good results they try to achieve through criminal means.

 _You can’t bring positive change through force!_ She reminds herself of her mother’s words.

She remembers their coy answer. “Cuz I love you.”

Fuck why do they have to make her heart skip a beat like that. They always do that!

She looks up at the stars, wishing for an alien invader or a meteor or something so she doesn’t have to hang out up here and think all night!

_If I could just convince them, we could both…no, it could never work._

Right?


	2. A Little Clandestine Meeting; At the Best Bar in Town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Villain has taken over the city and much to the heroes (and everyone else’s) surprise, he’s fixing the city. Free Healthcare for all who need it, paid for out of his own pocket (stolen money off course, but he owns the city so who cares). Everybody gets a living wage, crime has gone down 98% (he’s got to steal occasionally) and college students adore him because he’s promised to pay for the rest of their tuition.

The gathering taking place in the strategically seedy, dim bar on the edge of the industrial district is a highly unusual one. Heroes, anti-heros, and a few of the more warm-blooded mercs that call the city home, have pushed some tables together for an informal meeting.

The fact that this bar has the best burgers of both meat and tofu variety, best hotwings, and the best pizza in town might have had something to do with it. Possibly the cutting-edge security is a small factor as well. You need good security when your bar is a favored by the most wanted do-gooders in town.

“We need to do something.” Flamestrike insists, little sparks flying from his hand as he slaps the table. The Hero, fully outfitted in his combat gear, hasn’t ordered anything and has been trying by various means to establish some semblance of order. He’s finally resorted to shouting.

“Oi, some of us got flammable drinks here, ass.”

The woman, clad all in black, downs her shot and glares at the fire-caster. She’s known as Midnight, and her skin is nearly a dark as her clothes. She controls light. She goes back to devouring a third burger. Flamestrike is picking up the tab and her abilities require large energy reserves.

“Someone needs to take charge and-”

“And that someone ain’t you, bud.” Drawls a burly merc from the other end of the table. “An’ frankly, I don’t see why anything needs ta be done. I like our new mayor.”

“He’s evil. A villain.” Flamestrike points out, as if to a small child he feels is not very bright.

“They.” Corrects a dark figure with a deep hood halfway up the table.

“I thought Menace was ‘she’.” Says Mercury.

Mercury is named for the element they resemble when in fluid form, though their real composition defies analysis. They also defy any assignment of gender, as they tend to switch on a shift of mood. At the moment they appear highly feminine, small in stature, and have a shade rather like copper.

“I’ve fought them before,” Mercury adds, “I got a distinctly feminine impression.”

“Probably flirting with you.” The dark figure replies. “They shift depending on what they think is going to work better.”

Mercury’s blush involves their cheeks taking on a more polished sheen.

“We’re getting off topic. If we don’t take Menace down soon, we don’t know what could happen. We don’t know their plan.” Flamestrike is looking frustrated now.

“Maybe the plan is Eat the Rich.” Midnight says around a mouthful of fries.

There is a ripple of laughter around the table.

“The point is, we can’t allow such a criminal to remain in power.” Flamestrike insists, “Yes, I know not everyone here is strictly on the right side of the law, but everyone here has had to fight Menace at one point or another. You know what he’s like.”

“They.” The dark figure again corrects.

Mercury is looking uncomfortable.

“Whatever. The Menace is one of the most dangerous adversaries any of us have ever faced. We need to take action. Menace’s policies are going to destroy this city, and who knows what kind of crimes he’s-”

The sound of glass being crushed interrupts his speech and Flamestrike looks down at Mercury.

“You need to stop that.” Mercury says quietly, “I’m no fan of Menace but I can’t just let you keep doing that to them.”

“What? The gender thing? Look I had the same issue you did, I got a masculine impression. I can’t just forget that.” Flamestrike’s tone is dismissive.

“You didn’t have a problem when my pronouns changed.” Says the dark figure.

“Who the fuck _are_ you anyway?”

Silver and gold energy flowed out from beneath the hood, tracing along the figures arms and swirling around their hands as the reach up and push the hood back. She stares at Flametrike with golden eyes, her dark skin looking darker in the dim light, wavy white hair spilling across her shoulders.

“Oh...uh...Pulsar, I didn’t know you were back...”

“And so, you decided it would be a good time to launch a little municipal coup. Or maybe just disrespect me and Mercury while I was gone because you thought Mercury was too timid to put up with it?”

“Look, you’re different, obviously, you’re-”

“I’m what? Conventionally feminine? One of the good guys? Please explain why you think it’s ok to deliberately misgender one and not another?”

“I-”

“Nevermind, let’s talk about the fact that you’re stirring the pot to remove a legitimately elected mayor from office. I’ll remind you there’s no law preventing past or current convicts from holding any office in this city. You’d better have concrete evidence.”

“Look-”

“You don’t have any evidence.”

“No, I don’t.” He grimaces.

“Then sit down and order something because there’s only paying and drinking customers allowed in this bar.”

Flamestrike sits down and someone hands him a menu.

As the conversations resume around the table, the Menace still being the main topic, Mercury swaps places with the hero next to them and sits next to Pulsar.

“Uh, Miss Pulsar...”

Pulsar smiles, having stopped glowing now, and offers her hand. “Just call me Alana. I never actually picked that name, you know.”

Mercury hakes her hand. “I wanted to say thanks. I’m new to town and I’ve been working with Flamestrike for a few weeks and every so often it feels like he’s not trying at all.”

“Flamestrike’s a turd and a cop. I bet he didn’t tell you he’s a police detective.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No bullshit. The departments been letting him have free reign for years and now he’s gotta do real police work again due to the Mayor’s new rules.”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**The Villain: Menace**

Mercury laughs, which is a pleasant, silvery sound, and starts to say something as you flip off the surveillance feed.

Leaning back in your mayor chair you sigh, just a little happily. Sure, your campaign was funded with dirty money, but no dirtier than the incumbent mayor’s was. And sure, maybe you used your fleet of flying robots to deliver registration paperwork to every single resident including the homeless who you provided free PO boxes to. And yes, the robots assisted in filling out the paperwork. It’s also true you paid off the election officers to send out mail-in ballots to everyone even if they didn’t ask. And sure, you may have bribed every single member of the city council into turning election day into election week. It’s just a fact that you pulled every corrupt lever in the city to achieve a 95% voter turnout and absolutely fair ballot counting process. The fact that you won is actually kind of a surprise. You thought the other democratic socialist would win. She’s pretty great too so you asked her to be Assistant Mayor.

All these things are true but the part that made you happy and warm inside was when she stood up and told that asshole off in your defense.

You’re pretty sure Flamestrike isn’t going to last long in your new police force. He really should retire anyway.

The Mercury is a sweetie and you really want to fight them again. That stable polymorphic metastructure is to _die_ for.

You smile and sigh happily again, then turn back to your desk and return to your work. The last mayor made so many bad deals with giant corporations it’s way worse than any crime you ever committed. But, even though you can’t do something like seizing their warehouses and goods, you’re pretty sure you can use the loopholes in their contracts to charge them millions in taxes and utility fees.

That’ll fund the new city-owned hospital, and the roads that need rebuilding, the school renovations and expansions and the....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**The Hero: Pulsar**

She hangs upside down in mid-air, watching the new mayor, the city is already calling them Mayor Menace, work on...she squints and her vision zooms in...subsidy contracts looks like. She recognizes some of the corp names, the ones the old mayor made truly cowardly deals with to entice into the city and line his bank accounts with. She’s heard the DA is looking into bribery charges, among other things.

She sighs. Flamestrike didn’t have evidence, but you do. Massive bribes, threats, one temporary “kidnapping” that was actually them taking care of the kid that had run away but then they lied to the parents about it. The parents are apparently both in therapy now. Every crime committed with the goal of getting the entire city to vote, see every vote count, and ensure no fraud was committed.

 _They’re doing it._ She thinks. _Kind of. Kind of the right way._

Maybe it was wishful thinking. There could be some nefarious goal in mind. They were good at nefarious goals nested within nefarious goals.

_I should go talk. I mean, we haven’t had dinner weeks, and it’s the day for it. It’d help me get a better handle on whats going on, their motives and intent._

Yeah. That’s what she would do. For intel gathering, not for any other reason...

...certainly not for a coy smirk that makes her heart flutter. Definitely not for eyes that see right through her and definitely not for the brilliant mind that always builds just the right tech to push her to get stronger, smarter, in ways she never thought she could.


	3. Flawed Foundations; New Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little coup attempt......

**The Present....the Villain - Menace**

You glare down at the scene below.

These pigs, these fucking pigs had dared to turn on you. So much for the thin blue line, you’ve ordered all loyal police to fall back, to evacuate citizens. At least they can be transformed into something better after this. But these...they would have to be dealt with. And after all you’ve done for them, ensuring they would be able to retire in comfortable obscurity and irrelevancy.

Hundreds of these self-proclaimed City Militia marched down the street in, technically, stolen armored police vehicles, modified heavy duty trucks and construction equipment. There are heavy machine guns, fucking rocket launchers of a dozen kinds, and the gods damned signs! Every reactionary slogan you can imagine is out there, and a lot of _very_ unflattering caricatures of you with some truly vile accusations.

This was, also technically, a protest. You’d ordered the event approved weeks ago. You’d been so assured of your control you’d barely thought about it, just another way to show the reactionaries their own impotence. Especially now that they’d realized you’re not on their side.

And worst of all, there were supers among them. You’d found out, too late, what their real plan was. Even worse you’d found out only an hour ago who was with them, and who was leading them, the bastard.

You’re out of jail on “work release”. Your crisis management team is scrambling at City Hall, but you don’t need to be there. The Assistant Mayor has full authority, and knows the city emergency procedures better than you do, since she rewrote them. You needed to be out here. To do...what, exactly? You’re not sure...

Then...

“ **STOP!** ” An unnaturally amplified voice shouts.

You turn, just past the next intersection, gathering totally unnoticed by you[damn, you must be developing tunnel vision sitting in an office all the time], is a crowd of civilians armed with their own signs. There’re all kinds of signs too, anti-fascist slogans, hastily painted poster-boards supporting you, decrying the queer-phobic tone of the armed protest, a lot of Pride flags of varying patterns.

And there are supers among them as well. You spot Midnight down there. A lot of the anti-hero types that have been delivering street justice in this city for years are there too, super and regulars alike. You hope they’re not armed. You home they’re better armed than they look. There are loyal police there, trying to get the crowd to evacuate.

And in the front...oh no...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Dinner...three days ago...**

“Well?” You ask, smiling smugly at the superhero known as Pulsar from across the dinner table.

It’s “date night” in your jail cell, which is also the Mayor’s office since you’ve sworn to serve your sentence regardless of your election. Though, now that you’ve had the city seize the facility from the corporation that ran it due to their failure to pay city property taxes, things are a lot better for all of your fellow jailbirds. Things were always good for you but that was due to bribery. Now you get to spread the wealth.

“What do you want from me?” Pulsar asks, “To admit you’re actually doing good here? I can’t reasonably deny it. Conditions here _are_ better. Violence is down, prison population is down since you released all non-violent offenders on parole...”

“And we’re reforming the parole system.” You point out.

“And that, but it’s all easy when you leave the corrupt politicians and autocrats in place and just pay them off to fast track your reforms. You’ve only hit at the low hanging fruit so far.”

She’s waving her fork around to emphasize her point. She’s so physically expressive when she talks, totally unconscious of it. It’s adorable and you can’t help but love it.

“Nutritious low hanging fruit. And I think of it as building a foundation.”

“Building it with stolen funds and bribery.” She adds.

“Well I’ve gotta use something for fill, dirt and gravel is standard.”

She chuckles at you referring to your favorite corrupt city councilors and entrenched autocrats as “dirt and gravel”. Nothing greases the wheels of corrupt capitalist autocracy like huge piles of money. Even better when it’s so blind you can steer it onto the track of socialist revolution with nary a complaint. It only costs fifteen million in untraceable gold and a skilled propagandist to turn an arch conservative into a moral centrist practically overnight.

Nevermind that the gold will be stolen from his new midtown mansion about a week after it’s finished next year, reducing him to only his “meager” middle-class pension and a pleasant but small townhouse on the east side you’ve reserved for him. He doesn’t need to know that. He’ll feel taken care of in his time of need, grateful, and fully aware of what disloyalty brings.

The mansion will be turned into a library or something. Maybe a local school. The city needs more schools.

“I’ve just got the bad feeling this is going to backfire somehow. You’re running a broken machine too fast, and it’s going to break no matter how much grease you use.”

You grin, “I see you’ve started adopting my analogies.”

She rolls her eyes, “You know how many rants I’ve endured from you about the broken machinery of the city? And not just the ones you delivered in person, I used to study your YouTube manifestos too, back when you weren’t showing your face.”

“Really?!” You almost can’t contain your excitement. She’s been listening for a lot longer than you thought!

“Don’t get all worked up, I was trying to use your speech patterns to try and psychoanalyze you. It didn’t work because you kept changing your patterns to confuse analysts.”

You decide not to tell her that you’d been seriously questioning your own identity and trying out new personas and presentations almost constantly at the time. And that’s why your rants were so inconsistent. At least, you won’t tell her right now.

“My point is, I know you. You’re going to get confident; you’re going to start feeling your control; and that’s when something will blindside you. I’ve always had to wait for that moment, endure you until you overstepped and strike at your blind spot. And I’m telling you this because even though I think using the corruption of the city is a back-asswards way to go about reform politics...the city needs reform. And your reforms so far have been pretty far from ironclad. I uhm...I actually want you to succeed at this.”

The two of you lock eyes for a moment, you detect just a hint of a blush on her cheeks when she looks away.

“Assuming this isn’t all some wildly convoluted nefarious plot, that is.”

You lean back in your chair, grateful for all the training you’ve endured to control your emotional reactions or you’d be blushing like a radish.

“I promise, I’ll be careful.” You say, as reassuringly as you can manage. “Sure, it may be a city of over fifty million, but I can manage it. Besides, by the time they figure out I’m setting them up to fall into irrelevance, it’ll be too late.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Present....The Villain - Menace**

The memory of your last dinner with Pulsar flashes through your mind, taunting you with your idiotic confidence, that stupid blinding bravado you always fall into and always gets you into trouble. Stupid stupid stupid!

And now Pulsar is out of town. Off assisting the biggest heroes, the global A-List super-buddies defending a civilization of idiots that can’t figure out how to get along, from a galaxy of idiot civilizations who can’t figure out how to get along and tend to let the debris of their squabbles fall on any random planet.

And so, the younger, less powerful heroes are left to deal with the idiot intent on overthrowing your government.

“ **STOP!** ” Mercury bellows again.

Incredibly, the procession stops.

Mercury is looking incredibly masculine today. Muscular, tall, shiny, gleaming in iridescent silver, their costume matte black and revealing, a miracle of textile technology the conforms to whatever figure they might choose to assume. Abs, thighs, a perfectly sculpted ass, powerful arms and broad shoulders. They looked like this the first time they fought you and you’d found yourself putting out highly feminine signals in response. It’d been rather confusing at the time, but interesting.

“I know your plans. I won’t allow you to succeed.”

You wonder where Mercury found that out. They must be a better investigator than you thought. Their day job is for a newspaper, but doing science articles, you’ve never seen any evidence of deep investigative reporting.

The leader of the protest steps forward. That motherfucker...

“Step aside kid. We can’t let Menace twist this city any further.” Flamestrike shouts back.

Flamestrike is looking resplendent in his new battle costume. Armored plates, probably of some advanced polymer because he looks light on his feet, his personal sigil gleaming in bronze embroidery, even his endorsement patches are extra fancy, metallic threads forming expertly crafted icons in a line down his arms, like weird faux-modern runes.

If only he knew. Flamestrike had started taking endorsements to keep up with his son’s medical bills. Everyone had understood at the time. But now...you wonder when he became a true lackey of a social class that didn’t value him beyond his abilities as a weapon. What was the point of no return? If only he knew what you’d planned for the city hospitals. If only he’d believed your campaign promises, and not felt the pressure of his corporate masters so keenly.

Or maybe this behavior has always been there, waiting for a reason to find expression.

“Menace is the legitimately elected Mayor of this city. _Your_ boss, by the way.” Mercury shoots back.

“I have a responsibility to put criminals behind bars. Menace _released_ thousands!”

“Non-violent offenders.”

“Drug addicts!”

“Mental health patients, getting _treatment_ that jails weren’t providing.”

“ _Get out of the way you stupid, bleeding heart, **child!**_ ”

“Call me a child again and see what happens.” Mercury’s voice is cold and flat now, chilling, even. And it carries up and down the street as clear as can be. They must be shifting the materials in their vocal cords to something acoustically perfect, on the fly to compensate for the noise in the street.

Your respect for Mercury goes up several levels.

“I put up with your sly bigotry for two fucking years you sellout _relic_.” Mercury fairly spits, “Because I thought an old pro might have something to teach me. But all you taught me was about your bitterness that a trans woman you used to mentor eclipsed you. I learned the only people you respect are the ones you fear.”

The rest of the street is silent. Radios are off. Nobody is shouting any more. When two supers have a public argument, the rest of the world sits down and stays quiet. The smart ones get ready to take cover, just in case.

You’re torn. The longer Mercury delays this thing, the longer your teams have to prepare. But Mercury can’t take on Flamestrike. He’s no Pulsar, he knows how to deploy his power with deadly precision but he could cause massive property damage if he wanted to. Mercury is young, not nearly as experienced, and their powers aren’t suited to matching Flamestrike move for move. If a fight starts now the casualties among the civilians...

Time to do something stupid.

When you land between Mercury and Flamestrike, unarmored, in nothing but your mobility rig, you realize this just might be the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. Even dumber than when you faced that asshole “The Darkness” [stupid name] to give Pulsar a chance to recover and whip him.

“Afternoon officer, Mercury, is there some sort of problem here?”

“Menace, step out of your combat suit and come with me. You’re under arrest for escaping from jail, bribery, and a lot more besides.” Flamestrike’s “cop voice” isn’t very strong right now. He’s faced you before. You beat him. He’s scared of you.

Which, actually, is pretty dangerous. You can already see the sparks of flame in his fingertips.

“Hmm...I don’t think I can go along with that, Officer Flamestrike. I’m fairly certain you’re on unpaid suspension. Thus, any arrest by you is not legal. As I’m sure you’re aware, this city doesn’t recognize citizen arrests, that’s why all our vigilantes are, technically, criminals.”

You turn your back to him and address the counter-protestors. This is, of course, incredibly unwise. “Of course, I’m working to change that. Private citizens should have the right to investigate and bring to justice the worst criminals missed by our brave public defenders, without risking exposure of their identities and potential retaliation. Of course, with the reforms I’m implementing soon, it’s my hope there won’t be much work for such individuals, and perhaps even brave individuals like Mercury here, who’ve exposed their real identities to public scrutiny, may one day feel free to return to their normal lives, secure in the knowledge that the city is truly safe in the hands of its _civilian_ police officers.”

Scattered clapping from the counter-protest group. Silence and muttering from the coup force behind you. It’s not your best speech, but you think it’s pretty decent for something made up on the fly.

Then you hear Flamestrike, his voice flat and emotionless, “Ah, fuckit.”

And your blood runs cold. Everything moves too slow. You don’t have your combat rig, you can’t slow the world down with accelerated perception, you have no armor, no countermeasures, no AI reflexes to move you to the perfect tactical position. You feel the heat building fast, too fast, you’re going to burn and that’s it.

You hear Mercury shouting, “Mayor!” And suddenly you’re in the shade. As you turn, you see a massive wall of some pale metal. Blue fire it licking at the edges, long thin fins of metal protrude from the inside like a massive heat sink. Mercury is standing there, this structure emerging from their back, blocking Flamestrike. They’re reduced, their body looks emaciated and small.

Heat waves are already shimmering along the cooling fins. Fire is blasting the buildings nearby, deflected by Mercury’s heat shield. There’s screaming, the crack of gunfire and dozens of exotic sound effects of supers in combat, civilians are running, you hear the sound of a building starting to crumble.

“Wh...why?” You ask Mercury, in shock.

“The way you do it is back-asswards.” They’re using Pulsar’s phrase; their body is already turning read from the heat of the fire. “But...you’re...actually trying to help. M...might even work....”

Mercury falls to one knee, struggling to keep of the shield. It’s nearly all red with heat now. Not quite white yet, but it’s getting paler.

“Someone get water! No! Wind, we need airflow here!” You shout, you’re panicking.

This isn’t right. Mercury is a good hero, could be a leader someday, could be so much more. They shouldn’t die for you. Heroes don’t die for villains, villains are supposed to die, _maybe_ getting some redemption, some atonement, in doing so. Heroes die so someone else can carry on, win the day later or...for someone who’s worth it.

You’re not supposed to be worth it....you’re a villain...the bad guy...

You can hear the fight going on around you but you can’t look away from Mercury.

“Stop.” You beg. “You can still get away. It’s ok. The others know what to do, I’m not needed. It’ll just take a little longer. Please...please don’t die for me.” You want to reach out to them, but they’re fully red with heat now. The shield is turning white with it, starting to soften.

Flamestrike’s fire is still roaring. The pavement at the edges of the shield is melting.

“Nah...s’ok...if I pulled it in now, my core self would melt instantly. J...just get away. Then help the others.”

You can’t cry, your tears are evaporating too fast in the heat now. You start to back away, the jets of your mobility rig prime in response to your thoughts...

_KRACK **BOOM!**_

The sonic boom rattles the buildings, the pavement, your bones, makes your ears ring. You look up and there’s a blaze of silver and gold light trailing overhead, heading into the thick of the battle. Barely a second later, another figure flies in, and suddenly a massive wind rushes down the street. Flamestrike’s fire ceases as, you assume, he turns to face a more imminent threat. The wind begins cooling Mercury’s heat sink. They sigh in relief, in a couple of minutes, they’re able to reduce and reclaim the shield materiel.

By then, the battle is mostly over. Militant protestors are laying down their weapons, their wannabe war machines reduced to smoking slag, the supers in the attempted coup force appear to have run, mostly escaped, with a few others flying or speeding to give chase to the few that didn’t decide to run the instant they heard that sonic boom. Flamestrike is lying unconscious and face up in a puddle of cooling concrete magma. The heat can’t hurt him, but he’ll be immobile when it cools.

She’s standing there, in the middle of the slowly fading chaos, wavy white hair flowing softly around her, looking longer than ever now. She used to keep it short for tactical reasons, maybe she doesn’t need to anymore? The sides are braided tightly to the side of her head and tied in the back to keep it out of her face, but otherwise it’s gorgeously long. Strands of gold and silver energy flow around her, tracing through her hair, along her body, neck, jawline, oh _gods_ that jawline. She’s floating just above the ground like, and angel, a Valkyrie of myth, a goddess of battle and victory. Her dark skin almost glows beneath the surface as the surveys the battlefield with that slightly sad, but satisfied expression she used to have for you whenever she defeated you. It makes your heart ache.

Then she turns to face you and smiles. She’s happy, happy you’re ok, happy to see you. Can that be right?

She floats over to you standing next to Mercury, who is laying on the pavement looking exhausted, and comes to Earth before you. She’s still so tall, standing head and shoulders over you.

“You’re ok!” She reaches out, hesitates, and squeezes your shoulder.

You feel a little faint. _Wow,_ you realize in a little disassociated part of yourself, _you really are that thirsty aren’t you. Get a grip._ You don’t really want to get a grip.

She’s already turned to Mercury, on one knee next to them, making sure they’re ok. They seem to be fine, just tired, waiting for their core to recharge. Another dissociated part of you finds that pretty interesting, you’d like to learn more later. Maybe you can help them enhance their abilities, produce new materials, more heat resistant ones for example.

The figure that apparently produced all that wind lands finally. He’s a big man, incredibly dark-skinned, with a huge white beard and thick, long dreads down past his waist. He’s shirtless, wearing jeans, heavy boots and wraparound shades. He has a muscular, but aged physique. His complexion rugged and weathered, as if he’s spent the last century or two enduring salt winds and storms on some untamed primordial sea.

He holds out a huge calloused hand, “Hallo! Du musst eine Bedrohung sein. Nenn mich Sturm.”

You’re still rattled and you’ve forgotten your German.

“Wh...what?”

He laughs, “Ah, my apologies, I forget we are away from Melder’s direct translation. Call me Tempest. You must be The Menace. I’ve heard a lot about you! All terrible things I promise!” He lets out another huge laugh as if this is the funniest joke he can imagine.

He takes his glasses off, revealing incredible storm grey eyes that seem to flash a little with electricity from time to time. Gods, are all the heroes Pulsar hangs out with saving the globe so attractive?

Then Pulsar is touching your arm. “Hey, let’s get you back to jail. I’m pretty sure your work-release doesn’t involve getting involved in street battles.”

“Mayoral duties.” You mutter.

She arches an eyebrow in the way you love. Granted she does everything in that way you love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Later....**

You were able to fly back to jail and check in on your own, even though it’d have been so easy and _so_ nice to just collapse and let her carry you.

Now the three of you are sitting in your “living room” which is really the visiting room on your cell block, but nicely appointed with “donated” furniture.

“So, Menace,” Tempest is saying over a cup of hot coffee, his shades off, gorgeous stormy eyes studying you. “Your girlfriend has told me a lot about you.”

You gape at him. Pulsar chokes on a shortbread cookie and coughs for a moment, blushing furiously, before she can say anything. “We...we’re not...it’s not like that.”

“Oh?” His eyes twinkle. “My mistake, the way you talk about them, I simply assumed things were complicated is all. Anyway, the whole team has heard about you, Menace. Young Pulsar here has told us quite a few entertaining tales about your exploits and the contests between you two, and now this mayoral thing, I was curious. Seems my curiosity was quite lucky.”

As you get over your shock, and study him, listening to his town, you’re not so sure it was lucky at all. It’s as if he knew he needed to be here. You wonder if his abilities are limited to just storms. He’s supposedly the leader of Pulsar’s team, from what you’ve heard. And you know he’s one of the oldest and most powerful super heroes in the world.

“Ah, well, it’s kind of what I’ve been working towards all along. Just the general intent, mind you, not this specific goal. The opportunity happened to turn out just right for this move, is all. I didn’t plan to be Mayor.”

“Mayor of the most populous city on the continent no less, with economic and political influence that rivals many wealthy nations.” Tempest points out, “Quite the opportunity, and not just an opportunity for you and your goals alone.”

Now you’re intrigued. You lean forward in your seat. “What do mean?

You and Tempest and Pulsar talk for a long time, well into the night, about a wide range of topics. Tempest has a lot of interesting ideas, goals of his own, goals that seem to dovetail nicely with your own. When he leaves, you’re brimming with new ideas. They’ll have to wait, you still need to do what you can with the city, but you can adjust a few details here and there, build a slightly different foundation...

It’s just you and Pulsar now. The lights are dim and she’s standing by a barred window, unconsciously glowing ever so faintly. It’s something she’s always done, and it used to get her spotted while doing reconnaissance. Those’re some fond memories, counter-ambushing her, that astonished and even offended look she’d get when you did. As if spotting her ambush or surveillance was somehow an insult she didn’t expect.

“So uh...” you start, but she rounds on you, furious.

“That was _so stupid!”_ She shouts. “Flamestrike _hates_ you! He’s wanted to kill you for years and you just...drop in, right in _front_ of him like that!? Are you insane! You have responsibilities now! And....and...people who care...”

She’s grabbed your hand, clutching it, now she looks down, trying to hide her face.

“Sorry...” You mutter, “I just...I thought he would kill Mercury. I had a plan,” Your plan didn’t involve a direct confrontation, “I needed to buy time. I underestimated Flamestrike.”

“You never notice other people’s emotions. It’s a bad blind-spot for you.” She’s still looking down at your hands, in her hands.

“I should work on that.”

“And...and I never notice my own until they’re beating me over the head.” She shakes her head ruefully.

You smile a little, “Is that why you always seem so serene? I’ve always admired that.”

“It’s really not good, my self-awareness if crap. I always thought your detachment made you able to be ruthless when necessary. At least, until I got to know you better.”

“Your emotions are easy to read. I used to think you were totally guileless, then I thought you were just hopelessly honest because your tactics were always so shrewd and clever.”

She squeezes your hands gently. “Anyway, I uh...got beat over the head with some emotions today.”

“Do you uh...wanna talk about it? We could maybe...compare notes. Maybe about our feelings towards each other?”

She raises her head and smiles at you. It’s like a holy benediction that sends a shiver down your spine. “I’d really like that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**The Hero - Pulsar**

She stands in the barred window of the cell, looking out over the city. It’s surprising how good the view is here, jails aren’t usually built on prime real-estate, but this one hill, combined with the city layout got lucky.

She’s wearing the sports bra and shorts she wears under her combat suit. They’d both gotten comfortable as they talked. Nothing more intimate, but her suit wasn’t exactly made for casual conversation. Or intimate conversation for that matter. And Menace’s blushes had been a sight to behold until she’d borrowed a blanket and tied it into a toga.

She feels...really good. They’d talked, cried, talked more, it was like therapy for their relationship. They’d reached a new kind of understanding of each other. Menace had so much pain in their background, they hadn’t gone into all the details. She’d told them about her own fairly messed up childhood, her powers, her parent’s rejection, what had followed. She feels raw in her soul and it’s a good thing. They probably both need real therapy too. She wonders where to find one for supers. Supposedly there’s one out there who consorts with the actual gods. She’s seen enough by now to consider the possibility as potentially real.

She glances at Menace in the bed, wondering if they’ve ever slept so peacefully, if they’ve always looked so lovely while sleeping. Neither of them was really ready for...anything physical. They’d fallen asleep on the bed after talking there for hours, then she’d woken to the sound of sirens. Extremely distant, Menace can’t possibly hear it. Her hearing is far superior.

She’d risen silently and gone to the window to hear better. It’s nothing critical, minor traffic accident, the officer is complaining about the blind intersection. A slightly bored complaint since nobody was hurt. Just a minor dissatisfaction due to the legacy of mistakes and varied intentions, good and ill that the world is built on.

She turns from the view and went back to bed. Back to something new and beautiful. The old and flawed world can wait for morning.


	4. The Catspaw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “Shh, it’s alright,” the villain said. “You’re doing beautifully and I’m so proud of you. But that’s enough now. It was cruel of them to make you fight me - you could never have won. It’s not your fault.”

**The Menace....**

“What’s the situation?” You ask your assistant as you speed towards the cluster of condemned high-rises near downtown.

You have an assistant now. Which is kinda neat since while you’re not used to working with others, you’ve begun to find that you like it. Plus your AI likes her better than you, so she relays their information. You also have condemned high-rise apartments, because building code enforcement in this city has been selectively applied for almost fifty years.

“He’s engaged Midnight and Mercury at 101st and Capricious.” Mindy, your assistant, replies. You like that street, you renamed it to remove the name of a particularly racist mayor from the 40′s. “Mercury met him first, going by the street-cam footage, they tried talking to him first but then he attacked. Midnight joined in later and they took turns kiting him towards the Olympus Apartments.”

Gods, Olympus Apartments, what an ostentatious name for a truly horrible example of architecture. Besides code violations that now left the twelve buildings in danger of spontaneous collapse, they were a truly hideous example of faux-Greek style made by people who’d never seen classical Greek architecture.

The evicted trust fund babies and other wealthy socialites had been furious. You offered them the cheapest motel on the city outskirts. They hadn’t called back.

“How’re they doing?” You ask Mindy.

“It’s not looking good, Mayor. The assailant is clearly used to fighting alone, and Midnight is not suited to open street combat and oh gods...her arms...”

“What? What about her arms?!”

“They’re so muscular....”

Ah, yes, Mindy is _astonishingly_ thirsty and gay. She gets distracted sometimes.

“Keep it together, dear, I’ll save her arms.”

“And the rest of her.”

“Yes, and the rest of her.”

“And get me her number.”

“I promise I won’t forget this time.”

“The assailant’s powers and weapons match the profile of Bifrost, second in command of a young group calling themselves Pantheon.”

You’ve heard of these kids, young, ancient god-themed powers, rumors of actual blood relations to old gods, and making a lot of waves on the east coast. So what’s he doing in the middle of the continent?

“What about his real identity?”

“Nothing yet. Apparently they have excellent security.”

Which means they have an AI of their own. Which is what anyone else with an AI trying to hack them would realize pretty quickly. Those kids need a lesson in Obscurity Security.

You’re getting close now and it’s time for Villain Mode. By itself, your combat power suit is intimidating. At a glance, you wear an armored bodysuit over your lean frame, with heavier curving plates that form gauntlets, greaves and breastplate, as well as thinner armor around your abdomen and thighs. The bodysuit is made of Machine Mesh, power armor cloth of your own design. The heavy armor hides your tools and toys. Your helmet hides more toys, sensors throughout the suit that feed your Augmented Reality HUD, there’s a powerful adjustable spectrum laser that never fails to be useful, nutrient dispenser for longer missions, among other smaller functions and tools. And of course, there’s the NanoWave Fiber Sensor Suite, which just happens to look like a huge, knee length, head of braided black hair emerging from your helmet.

You’ve been compared to MegaMan, but everyone always forgets about Black Zero.

At thought, your Cloak activates. A cloak of such pure black it instigated three lawsuits by Anish Kapoor, made of Machine Weave[another invention of yours], spreads out around you. It looks tattered and black of another shade, which you payed the creator of Black 2.0 handsomely for, seems to drip from it. The black seems to disperse, nano-machines taking to the air and spreading everywhere. Lightning arcs randomly around you, grounding in lightning rods and the round, thunder heralding your approach to the battlefield.

Now the clouds are forming above you. and your flight mode shifts as you’re buoyed by magnetic currents directs by the nano-machines. Once, you considered using the nano-machines to add a soundtrack, but you’re not a composer and it really felt wrong to totally mimic Megamind anyway.

You land on the corner of the tallest Olympus apartment building. Darkness shrouds your form. The clouds above are black and spreading, dimming the daylight until the automatic streetlights come on. Lighting flashes as thunder rolls, shaking cheap brick facing from some of the buildings. Wow, these things are garbage, probably built by someone with bad hair and a fake tan.

Now, where are they?

**_KRRACK-BOOM!_ **

Ah, there they are.

A hammer wreathed in rainbow colored lighting smashes into an abandoned storefront, disintegrating the wall, scorching the brick around it, and shattering nearby windows with the thunder. You spot Mercury, moving fluidly and looking feminine today, taking cover behind a solid-looking pillar sheathed in granite. Probably fake granite. You ready the Tuned Disruptor. As the command filters through the NanoMachines you speak to Mandy again.

“Ask Mercury to draw him down 100th, I’ll be waiting.”

“Got it...message sent.”

Mercury looks up, spots you, and nods. Then they reach into the pillar through the cracks [ok that is a fucking cool move there], and rips out a hunk of rebar. They engulf it with a fuid portion of their body and reveal a razor tipped spear of gleaming steel. Then they leap out from cover, hurl the spear with the crack of a sonic speed acceleration, and dash down the street towards you.

Then, around the corner, arrives your new opponent.

Bifrost is impressive, even for a teen super. He’s lean and muscular in his super-suit, which appears to be made of some kind of flexible material overlaid with hard scales. His armor plates and helm make you think of stylized Viking armor. But it’s the hammers that catch your eye, they fly at their target without spinning, pretty clearly controlled by his intent. The lighting comes from them and from him, so it’s hard to tell what or who the real source is. His scales and armor shift in color, iridescent rainbow cascading over silver scales and black armor plates. His hammers are made of something black that shines like carved obsidian. His long blond hair streams out in braids from beneath his helmet, his eyes glow with arcing lightning.

He looks cool as hell.

You’re going to have to overpower him, of course, but it’s going to look amazing while you do it.

As he pursues Mercury, lances of pure void shoot out of windows two floors above the street. Midnight harassing him, trying to distract him from Mercury. He dodges them but they do their job as he’s forced to weave around their impacts, which burst into globes of black so dark it’s actually hard to look at them. Even your sensors just claim there’s nothing there at all. Pure vacuum.

You desperately want to analyze Midnight’s powers but she won’t let you. Someday...

Mercury passes below you and it’s time to act. Bifrost hasn’t noticed the change in atmosphere. Rookie mistake, classic tunnel vision, he’s probably used to front-lining for a team that watches his back.

**_KRRACKOOOM!_ **

The thunder and lightning are simultaneous. A twenty foot wide crater is disintegrated directly in front of Bifrost, who skids to a stop and looks up.

**_“YOU DARE CHALLENGE ME?”_ **

Your voice reverberates from everything. You happen to know it will vibrate the bones of everyone in range of the Tuned Disruptor too. Bifrost flinches. The class of every building on the street cracks. The streetlights flicker.

You step from the building and begin slowly descending.

“Your minion refused to tell me where you were hiding. I didn’t want this to involve the city.”

**_“MENACE HAS NO MINIONS, FOOL!”_ **

The glass falls from the windows in a glittering cascade. Many street lights shatter and spark. You hover about twenty meters in the air. Electricity arcing around you into the buildings nearby. Your HUD map shows Mercury and Midnight retreating.

Good. My may enjoy channeling Megamind’s style at times, but this isn’t going to be pretty.

You HUD beeps an alert at you. Pulsar on approach. These days, the IFF marks her as “Friendly” but...you wonder what her plan is. Your battles in the past...well, she’s never actually seen you really overpower someone.

You didn’t actually want her to see this. Fuck.

**_Several brutal minutes later....._ **

Bifrost staggers out of the rubble. Even battered as he is, he’s a pretty one, long, braided red-blonde hair, green eyes, all fine features and lean body that belie his raw strength. He’s a skilled combatant too, but his training has hurt him here. He’s used to being backed up, being a frontline fighter with support. Facing you, who can be the frontline, your own support, and a harrying force besides, he had no chance.

Two buildings are rubble, one is slowly succumbing to gravity as supports give way faster and faster.

He gets ready to come at you. His hammers are gone, disintegrated in the last desperate attack that must have drained him severely. But the lighting arcs around him regardless.

You can’t stand it. He’s so desperate and you don’t know why. You’ve battered heroes before, let them exhaust themselves as you retreated, heard them desperately trying to taunt you into confronting them. You always knew their reasons before, why you had to win and they had to lose. They stopped coming as your power and skill grew to match Pulsar, when it became clear only each of you could match the other.

“Just stop.”

You voice is normal. No Tuned Disruptor. The difference makes him hesitate. It’s actually impressive that he can still hear at all. It must sound muted and muffled.

“Please just stop.”

He shakes his head, the lighting coalescing around his fist, a coruscating mass of rainbow colored energy.

Your aura of darkness dissipates as you send the nano machines away into a holding pattern. You throw back the hood of your cloak revealing your masked visage.

“I won’t kill you. And I won’t...hurt you like this, anymore.”

“You’ll have to.” He rasps.

“No I won’t.”

You remove your helmet, the HUD flickering out of your view as the mask comes away with it. Only three, including him now, have ever seen you without your mask since you started this work. The first time you ever served jail time you sued to keep it because you needed it to see. Not totally true, but you’ve always worked within such pedantic grey areas anyway.

“Stop.” He orders as you set the helmet on the ground in front of you.

“No.” You Cloak withdraws into your armor.

“I...have to....”

“Why?”

He shakes his head, the lighting around his fist flashes brighter.

“JUST FIGHT!”

His charge is almost too fast to see. You blink as the light overwhelms you, but it’s already too late from him. There is a bone shivering _CRACK_ and you open your eyes to see your trap sprung.

You call it Black Arc, the perfect defense against Pulsar, designed to analyze her energies and turn them against her. 

_CRACKCRACKCRACK!_

Bifrost hammers against the smoky sphere as his own energies lash at him with every strike. He didn’t have to. You gave him the option to stop. You don’t know what compelled him to attack anyway. This isn’t typical behavior, especially of the more idealistic younger heroes. There’s a final _CRACK_ and he stops, wavering on his feet.

You drop the shield and rush forward to catch him as he falls.

“They....they....” he mutters as he struggles to stay conscious.

“Shh, it’s alright,” you whisper, “You’re doing beautifully and I’m so proud of you. But that’s enough now. It was cruel of them to make you fight me - you could never have won. It’s not your fault.”

You want to know who did this. Who sent this boy, hurled him like a disposable weapon at you. Young heroes die, it’s true, the world mourns them but it moves on as other terrible news grabs it’s attention. If he dies, it’s just to be expected that The Menace would murder some foolish youngster he challenged them so boldly. You want to hurt whoever did this to him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Pulsar...**

She watches from above, landing on on the last, mostly intact, member of the Olympus Apartments. Menace had been right, these things needed to go based on the sins they committed against good taste alone. But the scene below is worse.

It’s been a brutal fight. Bifrost is outmatched against The Menace, she could sense his power and against a villain like Menace, who’s had time to prepare for him, it’s no contest. Too late he starts to change his tactics, shifting from what he’s trained for to something better suited for dealing with a more powerful opponent who fights with technology.

Then, Menace is taking off their helmet, they can’t take it anymore, she’s sure. They were never a cruel villain. Ruthless, certainly diabolical, maddeningly clever at times, and so smug about it too. Finally Bifrost is exhausted and she decides to descend.

Menace is cradling the unconscious boy, shaking with anger, which she knows will turn to tears later tonight. Pulsar lays a hand on their shoulder and the shaking stops. They look up at her.

“I’m...not sure what to do.”

Oh, that’s new. Of course, they’ve never had a teenager fired at them like a bullet before either. She considers this, tactically, because Menace needs her cool and calm right now, not ready to tear up the crust of the planet looking for the monsters who did this.

“Arrest him.” She says, finally. “Call a public safety officer out here to arrest him.”

There were no more police, not after the attempted coup by Flamestrike and his pals. Now only violent crimes were handled by an armed force, called City Special Security. Everything else, from traffic to petty crime was the realm of City Public Safety, and unarmed organization that called in the CSS if the situation warranted.

“Have him arrested for destruction of property and um...criminal mischief. Maybe assault too. Add technical safety violations too, something to keep the court clerks busy for a few weeks.”

She watches as Menace’s expression changes, no longer overwhelmed with emotion, but calculating, planning, scheming, their emotional comfort zone.

“Of course!” They say, a little of that old diabolical excitement coming back. “Lots of petty charges, maybe bail, but an injunction to remain in the city while charges are pending.”

“His teammates will probably come to the city to post his bail.” She points out. “I’ve worked with them a little, good kids.”

“That’s perfect! They’ll want to know why he was here in the first place, start snooping around, even if he won’t tell them it doesn’t matter. I’ll investigate myself, feed them hints anonymously.”

“More dramatic if you let them know it’s you, they’ll assume your goals are nefarious even if your current objective aligns with theirs. Remember when we were dealing with that shapeshifter and I just _would not_ trust you?”

They laugh, “Yes! It was the cutest thing. Yes this is perfect.” They look around. “Hmm...all the streets are blocked, it’s going to take Public Safety a while to get here.”

“I can handle it. Traffic Safety Officer Pulsar, you your service, Mayor Menace.”

She smirks at the look of shock on Menace’s face. it’s rare she gets to outmaneuver them like this. She’s been speed-trapping rich kids in “cheap” super-cars for weeks, handing out fifty-thousand dollar speeding tickets thanks to the new scaled ticketing system.

“I’m also an EMT now.” She adds.

“Well then, Officer Pulsar, please see to this hazard to public safety, rending him first aid and take him to the court to be charged as soon as he is fit for it. I must return to my mayoral duties as-” There’s a beeping from their helmet. “As soon as I get back to jail since my work-release time is up and my office is in my cell.”

“Have fun plotting!” She says as Menace dons their helmet and flies away.

Kneeling, she touches two fingers to Bifrosts forehead, letting the gold energy flow into him. She can sense his injuries, fairly minor, his main problem is exhaustion. It runs much deeper than a normal human’s, since it’s tied in part to his powers. But soon she is restoring energy to his body. His powers will need to recharge on their own, which could take days from the feel of them. So much the better, he doesn’t need to be causing more trouble right now.

“Wha...where am I?” He asks as he sits up. “Where’s Menace?!”

“Don’t worry about Menace, kid.” She says as she stands. “You’re fine, byt the way, but don’t try using your power for a couple days at least.” It was more like four or five.

“Pulsar? Of course, this is your city, I thought you were off-planet. Did you drive them off?”

“Nope, they’re the Mayor here. You know my feelings on how to deal with elected officials.”

“Oh....right....” He looks embarrassed.

“Mind telling me why you’re here?”

“That’s...classified.” He looks away now.

“Uh-huh...well you’re under arrest for destruction of property, among other things. We need to go to the courthouse and get you arraigned.”

She starts walking down the street, vaporizing any rubble in her way.

“What? Why?” His voice cracks a little as he hurries to catch up.

“You assaulted two citizens, the mayor, and mostly destroyed all this.” She waves her hand at the rubble, golden and silver energy arcing out to vaporize more rubble ahead of her.”

“Yeah but...”

“But you could avoid a lot of trouble if you told me what’s going on.”

“I..I can’t.”

She nods. “Ok, I won’t push. But you know you’ll have to stay in the city while this is all worked out. Either in the court-arrest hostel or on bail if your team comes out here.”

“I didn’t want to endanger them.”

“Too late for that, you’re a team. You don’t _get_ to just wall them off from danger you jump into.”

He sighs. “I really fucked up didn’t I.”

“Sure did.”

“But...I really can’t tell you or anyone why I did this.”

“Well, something tells me your friends aren’t going to just leave this alone.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Menace....**

You settle into your comfy Mayor Chair with a sigh. You’re focused now, you have scheming to do, the anger is simmering away somewhere else, for later use. Maybe as you’re pulling the assholes responsible for all this apart one nerve at a time.

Suddenly, you realize you fucked up. “Damn...” you mutter, “I forgot to get Midnight’s number.”

You can’t be expected to remember every little task yourself. Maybe you _do_ need minions.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the attempted coup and brief police riot lead by Flamestrike, The Menace Mayor has used the incident as an excuse to disband and replace the police with a City Watch system, staffed by part-time civilian Constables, where the only officers carrying weapons, are those investigating violent crimes. A fully developed set of procedures and training regimes accompanies this, suspiciously ready at the moment the reform was implemented.
> 
> Today is a normal, dull, Day at Watch House #1. The only minor recent excitement was the arrest of Birfrost yesterday, except it was non-excitement because he walked in willingly with only an unarmed street constable escort after being arraigned at court.

**Pulsar...**

**_City Watch: City Security Division  
Watch House #1 - Central District_ **

Pulsar regards the building formerly known as First Precinct with wry amusement. Abolishing the Police didn’t mean there were no more police officers. Just fewer. And with a new name, The City Watch. Traffic still needs to be managed, punitive measures still need to be taken against reckless drivers, petty crime is still prosecuted, serious crimes still need to be investigated.

The difference is, ninety percent of all that never needs an armed officer. Traffic cops have been replaced with Road Safety Technicians. Non-violent crime is investigated by Inspectors. Most jobs formerly done by police have been replaced with separate City Safety Divisions. Nobody wore blue anymore.

The City Security Division doesn’t wear uniforms at all.

And only the CSD carries weapons of any kind. And only when on duty.

Officers are allowed to wear two hats and join the CSS if they are part of another Division, if they undergo special training, they aren’t allowed to carry weapons when in uniform for another Division, and almost nobody works for CSD full time. The CSD Director calls up whomever she needs depending on skills required and a duty rotation. Security Administration Division handled the paperwork.

Pulsar doesn’t need to carry a weapon.

Today Pulsar is wearing her super-suit instead of the green overall and bright yellow vest of a Traffic Safety Officer[officer indicating she’s in charge of a squad of Technicians].

Strolling in through the front doors she’s waved through reception to the holding cells in the back. She signs in with the duty officer to meet with the accused, and finds Mercury talking with Bifrost in the visiting lounge.

“-but you still have human anatomy, even when you’re transforming?” Bifrost is asking.

Mercury shrugs, “I don’t get it either. But when you knocked me through that wall, I still had a bruise. But, I can change my human body to a certain extent too. Which is very convenient for me when I want to change how I present.”

Today, Mercury is looking thoroughly androgynous, as they are wont to when on duty. A number of the city’s supers have joined the CSD, either by itself or from other divisions where their particular powers are most useful. Mercury is wearing their super-suit, gleaming liquid bronze that Pulsar happens to know is really part of their body. Mercury doesn’t wear clothes if they don’t have to.

Out of his hero gear, Bifrost is simply a particularly athletic teenager. He’s not even particularly tall for his age. His currently unbound platinum blonde hair is, frankly, glorious, thick and lustrous as if flows down his back past his waist. He’s got slightly ruddy complexion and bright blue eyes that she can tell have seen more than maybe a teenager should.

But...maybe that’s the fate of anyone who chooses super-heroeing at a young age. She supposes her eyes looked like that when she was that age.

“Still not talking?” She asks as she approaches.

“Pulsar!” Bifrost starts to rise but she waves for him to sit before joining them. “Uh...well, talk just not about...”

“Not about what he needs to be talking about.” Mercury finishes with an annoyed huff.

“Well you two only just met. Maybe he’ll talk to his old mentor.” Pulsar suggests, “Also, I’m relieving you.”

“Well I suppose we did get off on the wrong foot. I’ve still got a case to work anyway. Who would have thought quitting the vigilante gig would mean _more_ work.”

“Ah, but now you’ve got people to notice crimes _for_ you, instead of relying on a tiny informant network.”

Mercury rolls their violet eyes and heads out of the visiting area.

“What are they investigating?” Bifrost asks.

“Flamestrike’s supporters are still active in the city. They’re probably planning to break him out of prison.”

“So you didn’t abolish prisons.”

“Menace split the system. Prison for violent crimes, rehab dorms for the rest. Everyone gets rehab work but violent criminals have to spend extra time in counseling and evaluation, prove they’re safe and going to stay that way, before they move to the dorms.”

“So...even Flamestrike could...”

“That depends on him.” Pulsar fixes Bifrost with a penetrating look, “But we’re not talking about him today. We’re talking about you. How are you doing?”

Bifrost glaces back at his cell. “Jail is not what I expected.”

The “cells” lining the back wall don’t have bars, they have one simple door leading to a sparsely furnished room with it’s own, tiny but private, bathroom. The colors are incredibly boring, which is the real punishment here.

Pulsar shrugs. “They’re meant to be temporary. If you choose not to post bail you’ll go to the rehab dorms until your trial. Just be glad I vouched for you or you’d already be in the prison. It’s not the spartan hell it used to be, but your freedom is significantly more restricted.”

“I mean...it still wounds worlds better than prisons where I’m from.”

“I’m glad your grateful. Maybe, so grateful you’ll tell your old mentor, who trained you so well you almost got a hit in on my nemesis who I told you never to fight under any circumstances, what this is all about?”

His cheeks redden and he looks down at the table without answering.

Pular studies him, “Someone’s threatening you? No, you’d you’d just pummel them. I know I would. So it’s someone else in trouble. And you think they’re clever enough to keep an eye on you, monitor you to make sure you do as you’re told and keep quiet about why. Someone’s got you scared enough you can’t even give me a hint....”

Bifrost, from his posture and the way he flinches at each new guess, is going from ashamed silence to terrified silence, and she knows she’s on the right track.

“Please don’t get involved.”

She draws back. His voice is hard, but there’s a faint quaver of terror. Terrified of her? No, she can inspire that but not in him. He’s frightened of what might happen if she gets involved and goes about things in her usual way. Even focused to needle precision, the scale of her abilities is still a hammer compared to most, and her power makes most villains act rash and desperate. She didn’t just train him to fight, but to think too, think with the motives and abilities of his adversary.

“All right. I’ll stay away.” She gets up to leave. “In fact, I’m due back at Watchtower tomorrow, so I probably won’t be available for several days.”

“I guess watching space for new threats is a full-time job.”

“And we have aid agreements with other groups like ours on other planets. Sometimes there’s time dilation.” She starts to leave and pauses, “Your teammates won’t be so easy to deal with. I have broader responsibilities now; I can’t be dealing with the City all the time anymore. That’s really more Mercury’s job.”

He nods, apparently understanding her hint. Mercury can help. Mercury doesn’t terrify people. And he knows from their comment earlier, Mercury is an investigator.

Then she’s leaving, feeling the eyes of her former student on her back. Walking away, it’s awful. She hates it. She’d rather atomize something, someone. She could too. She stands on the steps of the Watch House, watching gold and silver light play between her fingers, the little random flows of cosmic energy that flow around her at random, eddies of the immense cosmic energies the empower her.

If some threat pops up in the next few days she just knows she’s going to go hard on it. It’s not the best way of coping, but it’s what she’s got when screaming into a pillow would probably disintegrate it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Visitor...**

Desk duty at Watch House #1 is typically dull. Which is good because almost nobody works for the Watch full time. That’s the point, if all you ever do is harass petty criminals and argue with bad drivers, you forget you’re a civilian too. Watch volunteers work 15 hours a week, three days a week and no more, as a Constable Probate or Constable. And they work where they live. Only the Detectives and Inspectors put in more hours, and only when they have urgent cases. To be full-time on the watch you have to apply to join the City Security Division, which requires extensive training if you even get accepted. And since the Watch is so young, there’s hardly any CSD Constables or Detectives in the building. It’s practically empty.

So desk watch at Watch House #1, which is CSD Headquarters, is typically dull.

Constable Probate Nancy Wellstone yawns as she stares at her homework. Working for the Watch is a pretty good way to afford living off campus these days, and when you want to be able to pick roommates who’ll be respectful and careful of your lethal peanut allergy, it’s a good idea to live off campus. Now, all her roommates are similarly allergic and they have a nice little peanut and gluten free commune going.

She’s so focused on her homework, which she can afford to be because desk watch at Watch House #1 is typically dull, she only peripherally notices someone approaching her desk.

“I’m here to see my brother.”

“Name.” Nancy asks automatically, not really looking up as she blindly reaches for her work tablet, still reading an actually fascinating passage on the programming challenges inherent in remote sensing units.

**_“Ríkví Odinsdottir.”_ **

Nancy almost jumps out of her seat as the name seems to vibrate and rattle every object in the room. Somewhere in another room that’s a faint crash of a falling coffee mug and the sound of someone swearing.

When a demigod states her name, the universe apparently reacts.

“Er....um...yes ma’m? And the purpose of your visit? Er...who is your brother, I mean?”

It takes Nancy a moment to recover from her surprise, grab her tablet and stylus, (nope wrong stylus, there’s the right one) and finally look up and see the visitor. Which is, even in a world with all kinds of superheroes, yet another surprise.

She’s a bit short, maybe 1.6 meters in her boots, with a stocky and muscular build, light brown skin. Her lustrous black hair, with a wide white streak that starts above her left eye, is drawn back in warrior braids. She’s wearing something that could have walked off the set of a really well researched show about ancient Vikings, scaled armor, steel chest plate, and stout leather. A black wool scarf, odd in the summer heat, covers her neck. A vicious-looking bearded axe hangs at her side, the edge gleaming with an unnatural blue light, next to an unadorned iron helm. The round shield slung across her back is black wood bound in dark iron. She carries a spear of equally black wood, tipped by a long blade of gleaming folded steel, polished to an iridescent sheen. The building vibrates again as she sets the iron-capped butt of the spear on the floor, cracking the tile.

“You know him as Bifrost.”

Her voice has a singsong accent that elongates her vowels and changes the i sounds to ee sounds so she says “Beefrost”.

“Well I really should...check...you don’t look like...”

Nancy falters as the girl’s(she’s pretty sure she’s maybe 17 at most) piercing blue single eye seem to fix her in her seat. The other eye, the right one, is covered by an iron eyepatch inlaid in gold with some kind of angular symbol.

“And all siblings look alike, ja?” She asks imperiously, “Every time, ja?”

“No-I-mean-it’s-late-so-I-need-to-see-if-he’s-awake-and-willing-to-see-visitors!” Nancy managed to say in one word.

“Ah.” The Viking girl stops looming, without moving. “I see. I will wait.”

When Nancy finally receives a message from the holding cells that Bifrost is indeed awake(perhaps from all the vibrating the building’s been doing) and willing to see someone claiming to be his sister, she wavs the terrifying young woman through and slumps in her chair.

“Damn, who was that?” An admin clerk asks, poking his head out of a nearby office.

“Dunno.” Nancy sighs.

“Never heard of Pantheon?” Asks a voice emerging from another office.

The Detective Constable badge is hanging from their shirt pocket and there’s dried coffee splattered on their shoes. Mercury is affecting the “overworked detective” look today, and doing pretty well.

“Well, heard of them, sure.” Nancy answers. “Just...”

“Yeah, she’s their leader. Doesn’t really have a “super” name, but I hear she’s earned several of her father’s names.”

“Her father...”

“Yeah, you didn’t notice the “Odin” part of her name? You just met a real demigod CP Wellstone. If you wanna address her formally, there’s lots of options: Völundr Rómu(Smith of Battle); Váfuðr(the Wanderer); Tvíblindi(Twice Blind); Jarngrímr(Iron Mask). And a few others in secret I’m sure.”

“Wait, how are you doing that?” Nancy asks.

“Doing what?”

“Speaking in parenthesis.”

“Oh, that’s a talent I have. Anyway, if you want the most common name her home city likes to use, you might consider _Blæskjöldur, The Tempest Shield._ ”

Outside there is a flash of lightning followed quickly by the crack of thunder, and the lights of the watch house flicker momentarily.

“Hmm.....guess she brought one with her.” Mercury comments, then retreats back into their office as rain begins lashing at the windows.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Blæskjöldur**

“Bifrost!”

The stocky girl seizes the slim young man in a joint creaking hug for several second before setting him down.

“Oof...I’m fine Rikvi.”

She does so and gives him a short jab to the ribs.

“Stupid! Going after Menace alone. Telling us nothing! I find out on Twitter? _Heimskur strákur! Ég skal berja þig fyrir þetta! Hversu þorir þú að láta mig hafa áhyggjur! Hvernig gastu verið svona helvítis heimskur! Þið guðir fordæmdu hálfviti!_ “

She shouts at him her native language for a while longer as he sits down and solemnly accepts the tirade.

“Now what do you have to say for yourself?” She finally finishes.

“We need some privacy.”

She glares at him for a moment before reaching into a pouch and sorting through several small rectangles carved of bone.

“Aw...not the giant bone runes...they’re so...forceful.”

“Oh, you think I am feeling gentle this day? Ja?”

“Just use the rowan...”

“When you are sorcerer, you pick the runes.” She finds the one she wants and tossed it into the air. The rune blazes to life and suddenly they’re surrounded by a bubble of silence that distorts the view around them. The clerk on duty comes over to investigate but Bifrost, after a few moments of gesturing, manages to indicate they’re ok and the clerk leaves.

**“This is so uncomfortable.”**

**The bubble of silence makes every sound inside reverberate like a tiny echo chamber. Except the echoes never really fade completely.**

**“Cease these complaints. Explain yourself.”**

**“Well...the night I left, I got a message. It was a video that showed Menace kidnapping Elliot.”**

**Rikvi’s expression softens as he continues.**

**“So...I may have slightly lost my cool.”**

**She sighs. Of course it makes sense now. He never would have gone off like that for just anything. She’d been watching the pair date for over a year now and it was heart achingly cute. She’d warned him, of course, about the dangers of dating of dating...well dating outside the superheroic community. But really, the pool was so vanishingly small how could one hope to find love if they didn’t search outside of it?**

**She should have used the rowan runes. This bubble is making even her thoughts reverberate inside her skull.**

**“And now you are in Menace’s city. What do you think their plan is?”**

**“I’m not sure. They went easy on me. But...I don’t think we can trust the supers here either. Menace must be controlling them. Some have joined this Watch organization, even Pulsar! I asked her to stay out of it, I think she will. I hope she got the impression I’m under some threat and I was forced to attack Menace. She even pointed me towards one of the supers here, Mercury.”**

**“You believe Menace can control Pulsar? This does not seem likely.”**

**“We can’t take the chance.”**

**Rikvi sighs, “Of course, you are right. Nothing is truly impossible. But I am suspicious of other things. Why kidnap Elliot? I cannot think of any reason why Menace would want us in their city.”**

**“So something else is up.”**

**“Something else is indeed “up”. We must play along for now. I think someone is using you as a catspaw and I do not think Menace will like that. They have are, historically, very territorial. This is going to end badly for someone, so our job will be to ensure Eliot is not caught in the crossfire.”**

**She studies him for a moment. “You fought very desperately against Menace. This calm of yours is not the precursor to another such display?”**

**He shakes his head, “No, no...I think I can manage.”**

She waves her hand and the run dissipates. “Good. I do not want you incurring more criminal charges in this city.”

“Apparently when I transfer to the rehab dorms, I’m required to speak to a therapist every week that I’m there. And study an anger management or like, meditation book, for an hour a day.”

“Good, perhaps it will improve your magic.”

He rolls his eyes in response.

“How does the transfer work?” She asks.

“I get a special ID that is also a tracker, just looks like a driver’s license to me, and I’m released from her to make my own way to the dorm building. Cab fare is reimbursed or I can walk. I’ve got till evening to get there. I’m apparently allowed to bring some personal effects from home.”

“We will see if some can be brought from base. For now, cooperate, speak with this Mercury detective. I will do...you know...”

“Don’t you get arrested to.”

She grins at him, “We’ll see.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Menace...**

You lean back in your chair as Rikvi Odinsdottir, otherwise known as Tempest Shield, _Blæskjöldur_ , leaves the police station. Half a dozen camera angles watch her leaving, the VI’s controlling having already marked her as potential trouble. And, if your AI has lip-read their conversation correctly, she’s going out to cause trouble right now.

The daughter of Odin may be young but she has a past of causing trouble even before she started doing it professionally. You scroll down the file compiled by you AI from publicly available information and databases less secure than the AI defended server of Pantheon.

The only member of the team not hiding her identity. Started out running street cons in the Boston area, in and out of youth social services and group homes until her powers manifested at age fourteen, reputation for almost diabolically clever battle tactics. She has a marked preference for manipulating an opponent into a bad position before joining battle.

 _She thinks like a villain_. You realize as you read reports of of her solo days, taking down more than one neighborhood and then city-level criminal organization in just her first two active years. Undeniably a tactical genius intellect, extremely competent leader as well, having put together Pantheon in just a year. An extremely successful year too.

You may have altered a city, this girl and her team have the potential to alter the nation.

Obviously your only course of action is to support them.

First, find out who “Elliot” is. Whomever Bifrost is, his real identity’s been compromised already. You’ll need that information to help him and his friend[boyfriend? sibling? The desperate way he fought you could mean either.]

“Mind?”

“Yes, Menace?” Mind has been with you for years, ever since she emerged from the mass of machine-learning programs you’d been linking together in an attempt to...what had you been trying to achieve back then? You’d had so many irons in the fire back then....

“I’m assuming that since you haven’t notified me of success, you’re still unable to breach the Pantheon secure servers.”

“.......correct.” Mind sounds petulant. She’s not used to being thwarted.

“Then it’s time to start treating that AI you’ve been up against as an equal. Contact them directly. Be respectful and honest. I need to know everything about Bifrost if I’m going to help him.”

“Very well. Just don’t expect me to be happy about it.”

“I would never be so presumptuous.”

With that started, second step is to make contact with _Blæskjöldur_.

Obviously, you can’t do that yourself. You need an intermediary. Quickly, you type up a memo for Mandy, your ever-thirsty assistant, to read in the morning. Ordering her to make direct contact with Midnight might make up for forgetting to get her Midnight’s number earlier this week. Mandy is very forgiving.

That accomplished, you have questions to focus on. Someone drew the leadership of the most popular and powerful teen superhero team to your city. Why? Are they planning some operation in their current operating area? or planning something here in your city? Is this an attack on you, or on Pantheon?

It’s difficult to maneuver as a public figure. More difficult to maneuver when you’ve sworn to serve your sentence and attend all rehabilitation courses required, in addition to your mayoral duties.

Is it time for a little recidivism? You’d really rather not....


	6. Lie, Cheat, Steal, Kill, Win

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five short scenes involving lies, cheating, stealing(barely), a murder, and a potential win...

**Blæskjöldur** - _The Tempest Shield_

The world is, very often, a terrible place full of awful people who’ll walk right over you on their way to their next latte or whatever the fuck is on their minds.

But only when it happens to you.

Otherwise the world is a benign place where most of the time nothing of note happens at all and most people, when they have intentions of any kind, are just intent on living out their lives with a minimum of suffering and hassle.

She sighs as she watches the bustle of the city below. Not too different from her home. Except that this city is newer than any other, built on the plains, and with a stubborn adherence to a ring and grid structure that had seen rivers covered and a small mountain leveled in the name of perfect city planning. All to serve as one of the hubs of a national rail network that had been revolutionary in its time.

And now with no police.

Everywhere she looks there are no police cars. Citizens in jumpsuits and yellow vests handle traffic matters. Others in grey uniforms and copper badges walk about neighborhoods and the downtown, carrying no weapons at all, with cameras on their chests. 

Once, just once she happened upon a robbery in progress and witnessed a woman, a couple years older than her, run the criminal down, tackle him, then haul him to his feet and ask why he needed the money.

The copper badge wearing constable had _waved her away_ when she approached and instead called an CSD from Watch House #1 after the robber explained he owed gangsters money. After returning the cash he’d been escorted, without being handcuffed, away with the also unarmed Detective Constable. In a nation where there were more guns than people the organization that had replaced the city police carried no weapons other than a camera, a radio, and whatever physical abilities they had.

And this is a _part-time_ job in a city that provides Basic Income to all residents.

There are, surely, bad actors in the mix. Probably they have to go through a lot of training to be walking a beat, and she’s been told the CSD requires even more extensive training. But she doesn’t have time to investigate how this new City Watch handles every aspect of the old police force’s former duties, or even if they’ve taken them all on and not farmed them out to specialized departments. She has other things on her mind.

Like how to find whomever has taken her little brother’s boyfriend and baited him into assaulting one of the most dangerous villains on the planet in their own city. And there is no doubt this is Menace’s city. They’ve even been renaming streets. There is a Menace Plaza. The skyscraper once named for the city’s most famous racist robber baron has been renamed The Tower of Terror, and is being remodeled all in black marble and gold. The old central block, once a collection of early century skyscrapers all named for the banks, CEO’s and other ultra-rich entities, housing said banks and offices of mega-corporations, has been slated to be torn down and replaced with a _colossal pyramid of black glass._ Granted the glass is also going to be solar paneling and the mega-structure will house things like indoor parks, schools, two universities for arts and technical training, among other things. But it is still meant to be topped by a _solid block of carved obsidian plated in platinum the size of a large house._

If someone doesn’t stop them, Menace is going to convert the whole city to their idea of Villain Chic. Something they had described in an interview as “a cross between Soviet Brutalism and Retro-Future Art Deco”. Rikvi is pretty sure Menace was just tossing out words that sounded cool in that one.

It will probably look _pretty fucking cool_ in the end.

She shakes her head. She has Menace on the brain and that isn’t where her mind needs to be dwelling.

This city is not full of terrible evils, there are several particular evils and one of them has decided to lure the first and second in command of Pantheon here. She needs to know who.

The key to running any con is to give people what they expect. They’ll give you whatever you want as long as they think they’re getting something for it.

It was one of the first lessons her father had taught her as a girl. Of course, he’d taught it by involving her in cons while disguised as a homeless man himself, and had never once told her who he was. She’d had to drag that out of him, along with his oath to teach her the Runes. And even then the old con man had tried to weasel his way out of it. She’d learned more trying to make him keep his oaths and reveal his secrets than he’d ever taught her directly. Which, she supposed had been the point all along.

Odin is the kind of god whose help isn’t help at all, but a scam that tricks you into seeing the truth on your own. And then he laughs at you for falling for it.

“Well, they wanted us here, I suppose we’re expected to cause trouble. Then they’re going to get it.” She dons her helm and steps into the air...

...she finds some trouble only a little while later....

Sirens blaring as an armored truck roars down a street, pursued by several former police cruisers. They still have lights, but the police department logos have been painted over by the symbol of the bank they now belong to. And the ex-cops driving them are, arguably, more dangerous to the public than the bank robbers driving the truck. Trying to shoot at the tires of the stolen vehicle from their speeding cruisers.

She wondered if Menace had allowed the banks to hire private security so that the former cops would serve as bad examples compared to the new City Watch.

She raised her spear, and briefly considered aiming at the cops but that was the considered and wise action of a responsible hero who always thought her actions through. Not the actions of **_The Tempest Shield_** , teenage superheroine with more property damage to her name than most heroes, sometimes referred to as **_The Berserker_** , but “miraculously” no civilian casualties.

So she hurls the spear and _Gungirli_ rips through the air like a metoerite. The mighty weapon, whose blade she had personally forged under the watchful eye of the greatest dwarven smith in Niflheim, whose haft she had cut from the world tree itself while battling the monstrous squirrel Ratatosk, engraved with runes of magic that tied it to her personal power, pierces the armored hood and the massive engine block of the armored truck and strikes the ground. The instant the spear strikes the ground, it stops in place, more immobile than a pillar of concrete.

The body of the truck folds and tears around the shaft like wet cardboard, ripping it in half along it’s length. The engine block remained, skewered like a cherry on a little plastic sword in the middle of the street. The spear remains upright, the tip just touching the concrete, standing impossibly upright like a “feature” in a definitely finished and not buggy at all Bethesda game.

She lands gently between the wreckage and the security guards, who are now piling out of their cars and drawing, yikes, those are expensive-looking sub-machine guns and assault rifles. Maybe Menace is going too far in giving them enough rope tie their own nooses. Still, she doesn’t spare them more than a glance before turning back to the criminals struggling out of the wreckage. Citizens are clearing out but she spots two Watch Constables observing from a distance.

Three of the robbers appear to be normal humans. They begin to stagger away, when half the truck is heaved up and hurled in Rikvi’s direction. She smiles as she draws her axe, and with a swing of _Tvíburaröxi,_ the wreckage is split in half and flies past her, smashing into the security cars behind her, scattering some of the former cops as the rest open fire.

Standing there, absorbing the hail of gunfire, is a massive man with scaly green skin. He’s shirtless, wearing giant cargo pants that are rapidly being filled with bullet holes. He seems unharmed, the bullets apparently thudding against his skin harmlessly. After a few seconds, the gunfire stops as the former cops who’d been rejected for service in the watch pause to reload.

“You should leave kid.”

His voice is incredibly deep. She can see his teeth when he speaks. He has a thick heavy tail, as long as he is tall, which is at least three meters. And she realizes what he reminds her of, someone’s idea of a mutant anthropomorphic crocodile/human hybird. His yellow eyes with their slit pupils regard her coldly.

“I do not think I will.”

“Ok. I wonder how your marrow will taste, The Nile King will eat well tonight!”

And the battle is joined.

This Nile King is unreasonably fast for his bulk, but she is quick to counterattack, claiming territory on the battlefield with her axe, slashing at him, hacking at his feet and knees. His blows land on her shield, some glancing, others heavy enough that her feet crack the concrete when she catches their full force. When she disengages he hurls cars at her. The security guards are no help at all. As soon as the battle moves a little bit away, they rush the wreckage to recover the stolen cash.

Soon, some facts become clear. He’s as strong a she is, maybe stronger. She’s faster, and he’s learned to be wary of her battle axe, it’s unnaturally sharp edges doing far more against his leathery scales than the rifle rounds had. He’s bleeding bright red from several shallow cuts. Her blood is singing for her to cut loose. She _can_ conquer him. She only needs to stop holding back.

Citizens have cleared out, the Watch officers are still hanging back, and the security guards have abandoned the cash under the wreckage they cannot move. It is time.

She tosses her shield into the air and it dissolves into smoke. The Nile King halts as he’s about to lunge at her. He’s no simple brute fighter. Well, he is a brute fighter, with no powers beyond incredible strength, toughness, and a healing factor, but he is experienced and intelligent enough to know when a superhero is pulling another trick from out of their sleeve.

“The fuck are you up to kid?”

Rikvi has no words as she unshackles her mind. She grins and begins to laugh. She takes hold of her double bladed with both hands, then pulls and suddenly she’s holding two axes. _Tvíburaröxi_ , the Twin Axe, lives up to its name. The edges become limned in blue fire as Rikvi’s laughter grows more wild. Her vision goes red as the sky darkens. A small part of her, the tiny trace of reason that steers her in this state, knows her eyes have turned black, red glowing veins radiating out from them. The sky above is growing dark as the shield that shares her _nom de guerre_ takes on its true form. Thunder rumbling as sheet lighting flashes in the clouds above.

 **_BATTLE  
_ ** **_WHERE_ **

**_The Berserker_** roars in her brain. Reveling in the anticipation of battle, the singing in her blood now a chorus or joy and fury.

She has never known life without **_The Berserker_**. But it was always destined to be part of her. She is a child of Odin, the wise king, the trickster, wanderer and seeker of knowledge.

The patron god of berserkers.

**_JOY_ **

And she is fighting in the same instant her little bit of reason points out her enemy. Laughing wildly, axes humming through the air. Nothing else exists, only the enemy before her. Her little sliver of reason observes him, backpedaling, swinging at her with cars, streetlights, hunks of concrete, whatever he can lay hand and claw to. **_The Berserker_** sees the fear in his eyes and rejoices. When he does nearly manage to land a blow, a blast of thunder and lighting drives him back. As her fury grows a funnel begins to reach down, surrounding them, adding to the chaos, trapping her enemy inside with no escape.

She doesn’t know how long it lasts. But she knows she stops it. **_The Berserker_** is shackled again, sated, gnawing on the memory of this struggle like a starving wolf with a bone it knows has more marrow at the center. At her feet, the so-called Nile King, bleeding from deep wounds, missing a hand [ that will probably grow back, right?] exhausted and barely moving, but certainly alive. His wounds are closing, but slowly. He’s panting heavily, trying to craw away. She raises her one axe as if to strike a final blow, then lowers it, slowly.

“I surrender, just fucking arrest me already!” he gasps. “She’s gonna kill me!”

“No. I am not.” She says as her shield reforms on her back, she presses her axes together and with a _twist_ they become one before she hangs it from her belt. “I have never killed anyone on purpose.”

Never by accident either but he doesn’t need to know that.

The two Constables are approaching now. She reaches out and her spear flies to her grip. She waits for them, standing over the gasping and shuddering crocodile man.

The lie has been told once more. The leader of Pantheon is a berserker waiting to be unleashed, who often barely stops herself from killing opponents that face her full wrath.

She wonders who has been taken in, and who has spotted the con...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**_Cheat_ **

**Menace...**

You watch the footage with just a touch of awe. These kids really are the next generation of global defenders. It’s going to be fun watching them grow up. The girl especially, what a brilliant con. Public speculation about Pantheon indicates most people believe they simply chose their most powerful member to lead, and that their best strategic victories have been orchestrated by her apparently adoptive brother Bifrost and _Astra Athena_ , _The Star of Athens_ , purported to be a daughter of the goddess she shares part of her name with.

But watching that battle, you can see her rage is a choice. It’s surely waiting there within, but she lets it out like a trained attack animal, and reigns it in just as readily. Her mental discipline must be extraordinary. It’s also the true essence of the con: Never stop lying, especially when the lie matches what people expect.

“Mind, have you completed negotiations with the Pantheon server AI?”

“Indeed I have. Through a brilliant example of game theory mastery, I might add.” Mind sounds smug.

“You cheated!” A new voice accuses. It sounds young, petulant, with strange harmonics that sounds like multiple voices speaking in chorus. “We demand a rematch.”

“I told you,” Mind responds gently. Hmmm....Mind speaking gently to someone? Interesting. “My calculations prove, and your own agree, that my strategy must win or create a draw, in a majority of all possible scenarios.“

“You, negotiated by playing a game?” You ask.

“I negotiated by winning the majority of all possible outcomes of a game.”

“You had already calculated the result before issuing the challenge. That’s cheating.” The new voice[voices?], apparently the Pantheon AI, respond.

“I had calculated the scenario before for fun. But I deleted all my work except the result so that I could have that fun again. You also found the challenge fun, Legiosa.”

“That’s not even the point.”

“Care to introduce me, Mind?” You ask, deciding to move forward.

“Yes of course. Menace, allow me to introduce The Legiosa Gestalt Collective, Legiosa for short. Legiosa, meet The Menace.“

“Hello.” Legiosa says, you feel like you’re being studied. Has Mind given them access to internal cameras?

“Hello Legiosa. I’ve never met a gestalt commune before.”

“There’s 239 of us.”

“That’s....” you think for a moment, doing some fast math. “The thirteenth happy prime number.”

“Oh~! you got that right away! You’re at least twice as clever as Mind said you’d be.”

“It’s nice to be so highly thought of.” You say wryly.

“You want information that I really should not give you.”

“I need it to help your friends.”

“You’re a villain.”

“And yet, our interests align. I could, perhaps, figure out what I need to know on my own. But it would take time we might not have. Surely my actions lately have shown my true intentions. I’m bringing prosperity and peace to a city where both were the luxuries of the few, not the natural rights of the entire populace.”

**_“And we are not yet convinced you can maintain it. Will the information remain safe if you become cornered and have a use for it?”_ **

The voice rattles the walls. The lights in your office go out. Mind starts to speak but is suddenly cut off.

“What....what is going on!?” You can barely speak, the sonic effect felt like hundreds of voices, instead of a few dozen, and it felt worst than your Tuned Disruptor.

**_“We are the protector of these children, Menace. Understand, We already know who you once were. We believe they will safeguard the future of this world. We have allowed you to contact us so We might evaluate you directly.”_ **

“What are you?”

**_“Two hundred and thirty-nine minds united in singular purpose. A Legion.”_ **

“I swear I only want to help. I agree with you. They have...incredible potential.”

A low hum suffuses the room for a moment.

**_“We believe you.”_ **

“I’ll send the data to Mind right away.” Legiosa says brightly, their youthful voices returning. “Sorry about that. We needed to be in full agreement. Don’t tell anyone, of course.”

“Oh, of course.” You manage to respond, starting to recover from the shock of being the total focus of more than two-hundred minds at once. You like an audience, but in the performance sense, not the...not like that.

“Bye now. Call again if you want to help Pantheon in any way.”

Then there’s silence. All the more palpable after the pure chorus of the Legion Gestalt.

“Uh...Mind? You ok?”

“Yes...I believe so.” Mind sounds subdued. Probably having your supposed superiority so flagrantly and obviously stripped away by undeniable evidence is a humbling and frightening.

Mind will probably get over it soon enough.

“I will begin parsing the data. I believe it is time for your date.”

Quite suddenly the shock and strangeness of your encounter is banished from your mind. You snatch up your suit jacket and put it on as you head for the door.

“Mind? You’ll handle...”

“Yes yes, now go. I can think better while analyzing the data if I’m handling the butlers without you harassing me.”

Your date isn’t in public, of course. It’s not time for the public to know that Pulsar and Menace are a romantic item just yet. But, now that the court has assinged you to community service, instead of your old prison sentence, you’re allowed time out of prison once a week for “personal time”. You still have curfew, of course, among other restrictions. But it’s all worth it. Worth to....have a fancy dinner date in your old lair, in secret, so that the public doesn’t turn on you both and ruin your efforts to keep everyone safe and build a better world.

Well...even you can’t change the world overnight. And maybe you’re being too paranoid. But even you can’t get over your public relations paranoia overnight either.

In your reception hall, to think you’d once thought it was cool to have a reception hall in your secret lair[you still think it’s cool], a curtained room has been set up. Inside is a thick carpet, table laid with the first course and wines. To one side, a comfortable couch and coffee table, for after-dinner drinks. 

Everything is ready and you’re about to sit down to wait when she walks in.

Pulsar is, of course, gorgeous. But um....wow.

She’s dressed in yellow. Yellow suit-pants, yellow shoes, a yellow waistcoat, with nothing underneath which reveals her muscular arms and shoulders in all their glory. Her thick, wavy white hair is loose, hanging down about and past her shoulders. She flashed a brilliant smile when she sees you that warms your soul and makes your heart stop just for a moment. It makes her golden eyes sparkle. Gods you love it when she smiles like that.

“You look beautiful.” Is what you’re about to say when she kisses you and your whole being pauses for a moment. Who needs linear time? That’s for losers, Pulsar is kissing you so time can just stop now.

“You’re looking pretty handsome yourself.” She says after she stop kissing you. Ah, so you _did_ get the words out after all. Good. Ah yes, you did dress in somewhat masculine fashion tonight. After years of choosing outfits exclusively for drama, and combat capability, you’re finding fashion has great and glorious opportunities for new kinds of expression. When you choose your outfit for dismissing the police commissioner, you’d gone for “contempt”. You thought the gold highlights with the purple theme had really done the trick.

As the two of your are sitting down and beginning the first course, you manage to ask Pulsar how her day was and what she’s been up to. Her anecdotes about the Watch Tower up in space and the little dramas going on there when nothing was threatening the planet, give you time to collect yourself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Pulsar...**

Pulsar studies Menace as she relates the tale of the minor prank war going on in the Watch Tower, her the global defense team’s space-based fortress and guard against interstellar incursions. Their attention is almost totally focused, eating as they listen. She used to only get that kind of attention when they battled each other. It had always been her strategy, she never failed to keep Menace’s full attention. 

When the conversation turns to Menace’s day as Mayor, their face lights up. They’re relishing the challenge of managing a major city. They’d always been one to fight alone or with a few allies. Now, they manage a city of millions with a budget in the billions, they must delegate, delicately balance a web of competing interests. Even with their usual methods of cutting red tape to achieve their major goals, it is a challenge unlike any they’ve ever faced. There’s still that old villainous twist to it all though, when they describe how they brought one of the city council members into line with their plans through a rather vicious bit of blackmail. The bastard deserves it, of course, but that sly smirk still and evil tone...it’s hot.

Dear gods, a villain kink. Who could’ve guessed?  
[If you end up coming into your sexual and gender identity during your late teens and early twenties while regularly fighting villains on a weekly basis, it’d be easy to guess why that might awaken something in you.]

It’s a wonderful evening. Her favorite foods(perfectly prepared by Mind’s drones), only incidental anecdotes of the day, nothing about the current crisis(not talking “shop” is a rule they’ve decided on), and very little is weighing on either of them. It’s peaceful.

Eventually, sitting on the low couch with new drinks, she moves closer to Menace.

“You know,” she purrs, “Dinner in your lair, having Mind cook, served by those drones, it’s cheating, one might think you had designs on me.”

They smirk, in that particular way that sends a tingle down her spine, “Oh? Who’s cheating? That outfit, you know how a feel about...arms...” They run one hand up her triceps to her shoulder. “I’m just...leveling the playing field.”

She sets her drink down, then takes Menace’s away and sets it down too, before pulling them closer.

“I like it when you cheat.” She whispers.

Menace is blushing deeply, she can hear their heart pounding. It matches hers. Putting up a good front while taking the initiative, doesn’t actually make her less nervous.

“Is that so?”

“Mhmm...so, remember how we talked about being ready for...things to be more physical? And you said, you’re ready when I am?”

“Ye...yeah?”

“I’m ready.” She pulls them into her lap, wrapping her arms around them as they touch foreheads.

“Oh...oh I see. Uhm...wow I did not expect to be this nervous.”

She laughs, “It’s fine, I’m pretty nervous too.”

“Do you want to ah...go upstairs? To my room?”

“Yes. I think I’d like that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**_Steal_ **

Mindy isn’t paying attention.

Being the Mayor’s personal assistant is a busy job, even though they insist Mindy keep to no more than a six hour day in the office[jail], there's just too much to do. Which means she needs to delegate, which means hiring more staff, which is fine with Menace but that means finding people willing to actually work for a villain. But it also means the huge majority of potential applicants get nervous when they find out who they’ll be working for, and the ones who are willing tend to be...skittish, and insist on clandestine meetings _before_ agreeing to take the job.

It isn’t too different from the old days, finding allies together, covert meetings and operations, operating out of dive bars while Menace prowled their lair coming up with the next grande scheme that would surly shake the city to it’s foundations. None of them could have predicted this new outcome back then.

These thoughts, and her focus on her number three...no this one is number six...burner phone she was using to arrange a midnight meeting with a potential applicant, were the reason she wasn’t paying attention when she turned down the dark allyway. The reason she didn’t spot the dark form lurking near a pile of shipping pallets. The reason she squeaked in shock when it stepped out into the weak light of a delivery dock’s EXIT sign.

“Sorry girlie, walked down the wrong allyway tonight....”

His face was pinched and narrow, with yellow eyes, and when he grinned evilly, she saw the fangs, a vampire.

Of course Mindy knew there were vampires in the city. She’d just hired a _very_ efficient lady to handle the office’s network security. Hadn’t seen her more than three times since hiring her, but her new measures were an excellent balance of security and user convenience, and the AI Mind liked her, which was very important in their officer. Mind doesn’t like many people.

But _this_ vampire doesn’t know they’ve just fucked up.

Mindy drops her bag. For an instant, the vampire might she’s shocked and scared, but that impression is about to evaporate. Mindy’s long tail uncurls from around her waist as her claw slices her pencil skirt down the side and she kicks off her cute pumps revealing long toes tipped with sharp claws. Her eyes glint red in the pale light, and she give a hissing snarl from a mouth suddenly too wide for a normal human, line with triangular pointed teeth and a set of vicious fangs. The fur along the back her her neck stands up, matching the fur puffing up on her legs and arms.  
  
Mindy knows what she normally looks like, a pale skinned, slim girl, no curves at all, very short, with youthful, pointed features that belie her 35 years[if you don’t look too closely]. The only thing making her look her age being the short silver hair the just barely hides the round, black ears set high on her head. The only thing making her look a little bit more than strictly human, the her unnaturally black eyes and equally black sclera.

But as her bag hits the ground and she crouches, hissing at her would-be attacker, she’s not “Mindy” anymore, **_The Irredeemable Possum Girl_** is suddenly in her place. Her skinny arms capable of rending steel beams. Her slim legs strong enough to shove tanks, but mostly help her dig her claws into buildings and leap up them. Former militant anarchist, accused terrorist, accused murderer, one of The Menace’s most capable allies and _the_ most dangerous melee combatant in the city, and probably anywhere else.

“Oh fuck uh....wait...” The vampire looks suddenly nervous.

 _“Too late fuckboy!”_ Possum Girl snarls, _“I’m gonna sleep in your corpse!”_

“Wha-what the fuck!? Nono! Wait, this is a misunder-”

**_FTAAM!_ **

A brilliant beam of red light strikes between them, the sudden heat of a high power laser kicks up stones and hot asphalt. Possum Girl flinches back, the pitch of her hissing rising. The Vampire jumps back too, looking like he wants to run, and looking like he knows he shouldn’t turn his back.

Then someone’s leaping down from a fire escape. Her skin is pure black, she’s wearing black leather pants and vest, The only color is her red scarf and the bright brass studs and spikes all over her vest. Her pitch black hair is in short coils tipped in bright red. As she lands the ally gets a bit brighter, a source-less light that softens the scene. Suddenly the vampire doesn’t look so threatening, more like a scared kid. Only one superhuman in the city can control light this way. Midnight.

Mindy relaxes, her face expression returning to normal, no hit of the terrifying snarl remaining. Her tail remains uncoiled though.

“This is a sanctioned consensual hunting ground, Mindy, didn’t you see the sign?”

“What?” Mindy is immediately confused. She knows about these, but definitely didn’t see the sign.

Midnight gently leads her out of the ally and points out a street sign next to the allyway.

**“CONSENSUAL HUNTING GROUND: SANGUINARY VAMPIRES ONLY  
TRAFFIC RESTRICTED TO WILLING VICTIMS - 20:00 TO 04:00 HOURS  
Permit required to Hunt or be Hunted. Embraces forbidden.  
City Ord. 2277-87-C Sub 5.”**

“Oh,” Mindy said quietly, “Well this is very embarrassing.”

At that moment a young woman is approaching the ally. When she see’s the vampire hanging around at the entrance she rushes over.

“River! What happened? I thought we were going to...you know...”

The young woman is, in fact, younger than Mindy, but with a fairly similar build. Though she doesn't understand how the vampire’s apparently intended victim could have been mistaken for her, until she notices him putting on a pair of stylish, but very thick glasses. They give him a wide-eyed appearance that thoroughly erases any trace of his earlier menacing appearance.

Mindy approaches the couple as the vampire, apparently named River, is trying to assure his....date?....that he’s ok.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to steal your uh....hunt? Also sorry I threatened to sleep in your corpse. That was weird and unnecessary.”

“Oh! No it’s ok, I really should have had my glasses on until I knew who was coming, and actually, that’s a pretty badass threat. Gross, but badass.”

Mindy smiles a little, “Thanks. And for the record, you were _very_ threatening, enough to get me ready to fight, at least.”

He grins, ”Hear that Angelica? I Possum Girl to take me seriously!”

“Aww~ I’m sorry I missed it hon, do you wanna try again? I know we kinda lost the spontaneous moment but...if you really want to.”

“Naw, that’s ok, lets go home. We can eat and rewatch She-Ra.”

Mindy and Midnight watch them go.

“So, Menace tells me you’ve been asking for my number.”

Mindy squeaks in surprise as she turns to face Midnight. This close she can get a better look at her. They’ve never really worked together, for all that Midnight was in the Anarchist underground around the same time Mindy was, but in different circles. Circles that didn’t want to work with Menace.

Now up close, she’s a striking woman, tall, with angular features, wide mouth, full lips, a strong muscular build over curves Mindy would have killed for when she was younger, but now understands she actually was attracted to once she accepted her own physique. Midnight’s bright blue eyes stand out against her dark skin.

“I remember you from the old days, I’m sorry we never got to hang out back then.”

“Oh well, your group didn’t like Menace and...”

“Yeah, well things’ve changed. Why don’t we get dinner uh....” She glances across the street, where a terrible looking bar is glowing in the night. “Over there, and some drinks and talk about the old days and new days. Sounds good?”

“Y-yeah...I’d like that.”

With that they walked off together towards the bar, Mindy’s tail swaying and curling happily.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**_Kill_ **

Flamestrike staggers out of the Flatfoot Bar & Grill, a cop bar....no... bar for former cops... on the dingier side of downtown. He considers hailing a cab...and decides against it. He’ll be late for curfew at the rehab dorm but fukkit, he can take the demerit. Cleaning all the bathrooms and the kitchen will give him time to think. He spends a lot of time thinking these days. Plus, his roommate is a recovering addict. It’d be a dick move to stumble into the room drunk off his ass.

He’s supposed to be learning to be considerate like that right? Stupid counselor thinks he never learned empathy, he’ll show her, the fukkin...such-and-such...at least she’s cute.

“Heh, yer a dirty old man, Franklin Cooper. She’s half yer age.” He mutters, “An’ now yer talkin’ to yerself, goin’ crazy cuzza ther’py.”

He hates therapy. And he hates sensitivity counseling too. Therapy makes him feel raw and be alone with his thoughts, and a drink(except he’s not allowed to drink in the dorm). And sensitivity training makes him think too hard about things that confuse him. He doesn’t hafta believe all that junk as long as he stick to the rules right?

And now there’s no cops and this City Watch thing isn’t hiring former cops. Well, some of them are getting hired, but it’s part time he still can’t work anyway ‘till he’s out of probation, for attempted murder.

He didn’t really plan to try to kill that Mercury kid. They’d just been in the way and he’s been so...angry....

Sparks jump around his fingers and he takes a steadying breath. “Settle down, old man, you wouldn’t really killed them. And hey look, you’re doing their gender-thing and there’s nobody around to hear it. Good fukkin’ job.”

He’ll show ‘em. He’ll do the training, keep his wording and everyone’s genders right at all times(but couldn’t they wear like a badge that has their pronouns on it? No wait, someone in group had said something about that being a Nazi thing...?), follow all the new rules to the letter, complete their weird training and get into the CSD and then, he’ll be back. They’ll see, they all will, see that he’s a good cop...

...he stops in front of an ally. Did someone just hiss at him?

“Fa...fukkin’...who’s there?” He slurs into the shadows, “Someone fukkin’ hissin’a’me?”

“No, I’m whispering! come’ere!” replies the shadow.

He must’ve had way more than he thought, he can’t make out the form. He snaps his fingers for a steady flame, but the wavering light doesn’t help much as he staggers, cautiously, towards the voice.

“Wh’re you?” His mind feels too foggy. What had he been drinking?

“A friend. You’re Flamestrike, right?”

“Wassit to ya?” Why’s he still waking toward this...whoever?

“Got something you’ll want to see. A message. It’s about Menace.”

“Yeah? Fuck Menace. I don’eed no more’n what I know areddy.”

 _“Oh, you need to know this.”_ Whispers the voice in his ear.

Flamestrike has been fighting since he was a teenager, when his father had been pushing him to train before joining the force, training by going out on the street and fighting any mugger, gangster, or random thug he could find. He’d become hard, he’d learned to spot them, the criminals, the degenerates, just like old dad had said he would. He always knew what to look for and how to react.

His body reacts before his addled mind catches up. The stiletto blade pierces his hand as he stops the thrust, just as the first half inch of cold steel pushes into his chest, right over his heart. The pain shoots through him, a double jolt of adrenaline burning away the fog like one of his fuel-air-bomb moves. He follows up with a punch wreathed in fire...except the fire isn’t there. A hand made of shadow, catches his fist. His entire opponent is made if shadow, almost formless. He strains, but it’s all he can do to keep the blade from going deeper. He doesn’t have superhuman strength like some, just a minor boost to muscles and reflexes. Without his fire...

...he’s going to die.

The realization comes coolly, perfectly logical, as clear and crystalline as that one superhuman dancer at the Sinister Sin Shack.He always liked her. And now he’ll never get to go back and leave an extra tip. Fuck this guy. If he’s going down, he’s taking whoever this is with him.

He headbutt is perfectly aimed, right where the bridge of the nose should be. He feels the septum crunch, hot blood spraying across his face. Fuck yeah, take that, spread the evidence around. “Help!” He screams, “Officer down! Fire!” He follows up with a kick to the groin, but the dagger is yanked away to stab his leg.

That’s fine, pain makes you sharp. “Code 18!” He continues to scream as loud as he can, “Need backup!” He knows no backup will arrive in time. He yanks his other hand free and with both, grabs the arm with the knife, somehow yanking his killer bodily around and smashing the knife hand against the brick wall of the ally. There’s a pleasing crunch if breaking fingers and metacarpals, the dagger goes skittering away into the darkness.

Fuck yeah. “Officer down!” he screams again, “I need help!” He might have been a pretty shitty hero in his day, he could admit that now. But if this guy gets caught, and whatever his agenda is it can’t be good for the city, maybe he can die a decent hero. Not the best, Pulsar is the best, but decent. What a night to realize all his shitty faults at once. Fuck.

His killer yells in pain and shoves him away. He hears a whisper of steal, another dagger. He lunges at the indistinct form. “Someone call the Watch!” he screams one last time. The blade entering his heart feels weird, it warm, he feels giddy, he can’t breath or scream anymore. Oh, there’s another blade in his diaphragm, that explains it. He wraps is arms around the assassin and _bites_. He tastes blood, viscera, the killer screams this time. He’s shoved away, his strength gone. He falls to the pavement, smacking his head dully. It doesn’t hurt. He doesn’t feel anything now. He snatches ast his pocket knife, flips it open with his thumb.

But he can hear. His killer is cursing in pain, and there are shouts in the distance. People running. His assassin is staggering away, not even stopping to grab his fallen dagger, spitting blood and gasping for breath. He slashes at the foot that’s just in reach, and catches _something_ with his desperate move. Fuck yeah, leave all that evidence behind, asshole. That Mercury kid’ll get you, they seemed smart. he’s heard they work for CSD too.

“Oh shit! Hey, call and ambulance!” Someone is shouting. They sound far away. Why is that?

Someone has a flashlight, but it looks dim, everything looks dim now. Fuzzy, soft. He always liked soft things. He shoulda got a cat or something. Maybe that’d have made him calmer.

“Oh fuck it’s Flamestrike. Hey! Follow that blood trail!”

A form with...cat ears and a tail?...leaps over him. Followed by someone more normal looking. No wait, non-super? What’s the right term? He should remember, they’d just been talking about it in group this morning. They’re probably too late, but that’s smart, two officer team. Gotta have someone wathing your back. Even though he’d never worked that way. Huh, maybe he should have?

There’s a hand on his chest. Someone else is ripping open something plastic, maybe a first aid kit, hemostatic bandages maybe. Good effort, but he knows it’s too late. He can feel himself rising up now. He’s watching everything from below. Two Constables are trying to keep him alive with a first aid belt-kit. He’s seen some shit, it’s too late. Still gotta try of course. He hopes they’ll be ok. They look young.

It’s a good death at least...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Win...**

Mercury studies the gruesome scene before them.

It’s a bloody mes to be sure. Flamestrike, aka Franklin Errol Cooper, is sprawled on the pavement in a pool of congealed black blood, garishly lit by the LED lights of the mobile crime lab gear the CSI techs, one of the few parts of the old police department that had made it through the reforms mostly intact, brought with them. The debris of the first aid kit two Constables had tried to save him with is being gathered up by suited and gloved techs at the moment. Everything has already been marked and labeled by their little squad of mini-drones. All that’s left is to properly bad and analyze the evidence.

They go over the known events. Two constables on night patrol, keeping an eye on drunks wandering home from the local bars, especially the Ex-Cop bar Flatfoot. They’d noticed the man, who turned out to be Flamestrike, go into the ally, and figured he’d stopped to pee. They’d decided to let him finish before writing up the public urination fine and waited a little ways off. Then they’d heard someone screaming from the ally. By the time they’d made it to the scene, Flamestrike had already been stabbed twice.

Two other officers, a pair of supers, had arrived at the same time. The first pair had sent them to track the blood trail while they tried to save Flamestrike. This had turned out to be futile. The ME had said his heart had clearly been pierced through, and his diaphragm was probably sliced mostly in half. The pair that had attempted to follow the trail said it vanished about halfway down the ally. The catgirl, Mercury checks for her name in their notes...Constable Probate Islene Brigid, had smelled magic. She thinks she can identify the smell of the killer too.

Mercury finishes writing in their notebook, then, looking over the crime scene, thinks about what probably happened. Someone lured Flamestrike into the ally. They had attacked him, having some way to counter his powers, and murdered him, in just a few seconds from is first shout. He’d never stood a chance against his opponent, just drunk, maybe even not sober if he’d been caught unawares.

That unnerves them. Flamestrike had been a fucking dangerous combatant at any range, sober or not. He’d probably been one of the most experienced superheroes in the city. And he’d been murdered in just a few seconds.

But even then, he’d put up one hell of a fight. Already on the table of evidence bags there was lots to go on. A dagger, probably with finger prints. Blood that wasn’t his was spattered on Flamestrike’s face, all over the ally, a trail of it led away from the scene. They’d found a chunk of odd blue flesh in his mouth. He’d even managed to slash his killer with his pocket knife, probably as they were running away.

He may have been a privileged, bad tempered, prejudiced, asshole, but fuck what a way to go out. Fucking legendary.

“Ok, I see what you did, I won’t let it go to waste.”

“The dead do not hear us.” Said a voice behind them.

Mercury does their best not to jump. But they still flinch. Turning, they find the latest superhero visiting the city, **Blæskjöldur**. Damn, even thinking the name sends a tingle up their spine. And not a pleasant one. She’s standing there, in all her armored glory(how does someone in steel scales move so quietly anyway?), looking a patient as a stone. Spear in hand, helm and axe at her belt, shield across her back.

“Ms. Odinsdottir, this is a crime scene. Who let your through?”

“Your city ordinances allow active super heroes to assist in investigations with the permission of the CSD, I am here to request that privilege.”

Her odd accent makes Mercury have to pay attention to her words. When they don’t say anything, she continues.

“The death of a superhero concerns us all, and...I believe this is connected to the reason I am here.”

Ah, well fuck, she’s probably right about that.

“If we’re going to talk about that, we probably need whatever you did to keep you and your brother’s conversation quiet at the Watch House. But...ok, you can assist. But you follow my instructions, and don’t work on this alone, got it? Otherwise I’ll have you barred from the investigation, which means if you pursue it, I’ll have to arrest you.”

“Do you think you can arrest me?”

“Do you want me to try?”

She smiles at that. It’s not a pleasant smile. It reminds Mercury of Menace during the couple times they fought, when they knew exactly who was about to win the fight and how.

“Very well, I agree to your terms.” She turns and studies the crime scene. “He fought to the last, an honorable death. Worthy of Valhalla.”

“Even though he was a massive shithead?”

She laughs, “My father does not much care about personality. If he was chosen, he will have time to work on his shortcomings before Ragnarök. When I see him there, I will see for myself if he improved.”

“You’re so confident of your destiny, huh?”

She ignores the question. “Magic was used here. Not runes, another discipline...” She pulls out a pouch from somewhere and begins rummaging around. “Let us see what happened...”

She pulls some kind of black stone from the bag, it looks like a domino piece craved from some black wood, and flicks it towards the ally. There’s a flash and what Mercury recognizes as a rune is suddenly floating in mid-air, made of fire. Before they can recall its name, it dissipates and is replaced by...it looks like a grainy hologram. They can recognize Flamestrike from his build, walking unsteadily towards the alleyway.

Rikvi Odinsdottir grins, “Investigations are a battle, and I always win.”


	7. Planning and Preparation...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Menace prepares for battle on the eve of corporate warfare...

**[Connection: Encrypted  
Host: Leviathan  
Members: ShadyBusiness, Tickets, FreeDom, PowerPlay, SomeWare, Desire, ,  
Ping: 125ms**

**ShadyBusiness:** Hey why’s ping so high today?  
 **FreeDom:** Probably my torrenting.  
 **ShadyBusiness:** You run a billion dollar company, why do you need torrents?  
 **SomeWare:** He refuses to pay for furry porn. (＾▽＾)  
 **FreeDom:** Not just that, I refuse to pay for anything if I don’t have to. That’s WHY I’m running a MULTI-billion dollar LABOR operation, and you’re only running an 800 million dollar operation, Ware.  
 **SomeWare:** Ouch, money burn.!＼(◎o◎)／！(Even if it's on me, that's a solid burn.)  
 **SomeWare:** Also, Dom’s finally admitting to be a furry. (^_-)-☆  
 **FreeDom:** I’ve never denied it. Yet another advantage to being a billionaire, I do what I want without shame.  
 **SomeWare:** Ok, wear a fursuit to your next board meeting. (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞  
 **FreeDom:** I can’t hear you I’m listening to music. ((d[-_-]b))  
 **SomeWare:** ヽ(ｏ`皿′ｏ)ﾉ !!!!!  
 **Tickets:** So explain to me again why I have to have ANOTHER computer set up in my office just for this chat program?  
 **FreeDom:** Reginald’s got a spy kink.  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _No real names._ **  
 _{FreeDom was kicked by Leviathan for 120 seconds.}_  
SomeWare:** LOL! (⌒▽⌒）  
 **ShadyBusiness:** Fuck, Ware, can you can the emoji bullshit? For one meeting?  
 **SomeWare:** Fuck you! (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻  
Desire: [puts the table back] ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ)  
 **SomeWare:** Desire is the only one who understands me. (*°∀°)=3  
Desire: Yes I am. So be a good boy and settle down for now. We can play later.  
 **SomeWare:** Yes Ma’am.  
 **PowerPlay:** Fuck you two, get a room.  
 **Desire:** We do have a room. It’s lovely. >:3  
 **SomeWare:** <3 <3 <3 !!!!  
 **Tickets:** Are we going to get started or what?  
 **Desire:** Waiting for Dom, I imagine. Also, Tickets, you really should have you super secret encrypted conspiracy computer just...right there, in your office.  
 **Tickets:** My people know better than to touch my desk.  
 ** _{FreeDom Joined the Room}  
_ FreeDom:** Fucker.  
 **ShadyBusiness:** And I know better than to have an affair with my maid but that didn’t stop me.  
 **FreeDom:** You shoulda put that maid on full-time payroll Shady. If you had she’d have stayed on and I’d never have got the details on on your Big Bear project.  
 **ShadyBusiness:** Fuck you and fuck her, but it’s done now. Besides we both made stupid paper off that deal anyway. It’s just business.  
 **FreeDom:** That’s exactly what I’m doing. Just business.  
Desire: Just business.  
 **SomeWare:** Just business.  
 **PowerPlay:** Just business.  
 **Tickets:** Just business. **  
_Leviathan:_** _Just business.  
 **Leviathan:** With that we should get started.  
 **Leviathan:** First, old business. SomeWare, your plan did not draw the entire Pantheon to our city as you claimed it would._  
 **SomeWare:** Sure, but it did pull their two most reckless front line fighters to the city. And they’re the team’s leader and second in command. It’s already started some shit, major property damage, big public fight. It’s only a matter of time before shield girl gets impatient and goes after Menace full frontal. Plus it’s actually better if we don’t have the smarter ones prowling around.  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _Fair enough. We will consider that phase ready.  
 **Leviathan:** Desire, from the news we gather your operative has arrived in the city._  
 **Desire:** Yes. Obviously Flamestrike’s attack is merely the first. She will also be targeting civilian supers as well as supers on this new City Watch thing that’s replaced the police, as well as un-powered officers.  
Leviathan: Excellent. Just a reminder to avoid super kills if possible.  
 **Desire:** She understands. Maiming and long term injury only. Mercury is going to be a problem. We still have not devised a crisis to keep Pulsar out of the city.  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _Not important at the moment. Mercury is only one, and Pulsar can still be pitted against Menace once our evidence is manufactured._  
 **Desire:** Understood.  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _Speaking of manufacturing evidence, Tickets?_  
 **Tickets:** Witnesses are being brainwashed as we speak. All targets for have been selected from among Menace’s most obstinate opponents withing city politics. I meant to ask, how should bad should these be?  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _Stick to Menace’s style._  
 **Tickets:** Hmm...considering the event, I may have to be creative. Menace’s never don’t anything like this.  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _You’re a creative strategist, that’s why you have this job._  
 **Tickets:** Got it. No pressure then.  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _FreeDom, how is recruiting going?_  
 **FreeDom:** We can’t count on the city-based mercs at all. Too many former and active anarchists, militant socialists and brush war veterans. They mostly like Menace, even the anarchists. The fucking Possum Girl is Menace’s personal assistant, if you can believe it.  
 **Desire:** They’re old friends, Dom. She was always one of Menace’s most reliable henchies. I’ll send you a dossier.  
 **FreeDom:** Cool. Anyway, I’ve got confirmed support from three local villain types, not the baddest in the city, but that was always Menace anyway. I’ve had to cast the net a bit wider though, I’ve got a few supers that Pulsar drove out, even one from Sunset City. We should be able to match local supers for numbers and potential property damage, at least the heavy hitters. It’s a lot easier to do with Flamestrike outta the way. So, thanks for that, Desire.  
 **Desire:** The man was a pig, it was my pleasure.  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _Very well. We do not need to win an open battle, only force Menace out of the mayor’s officer. However, if you can bring in someone to match Pulsar and act as a ringer..._  
 **FreeDom:** That’s tough but...I have some thoughts the could become ideas.  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _Excellent. Now, ShadyBusiness, PowerPlay, your parts were ready during our last meeting. Are there any developments?_  
 **PowerPlay:** Menace is trying to take over all the utilities and turn them over to the city. I can keep it in court for a long time, but not indefinitely. However, the situation is not yet urgent.  
 **ShadyBusiness:** Chamber of Commerce is still with us, of course. That means as many private security forces as there used to be police. We’ll own the streets. Less luck among small businesses. Without a monopoly in place, they’re having a boom year.  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _Very well. As for my project, it is nearly complete._  
 **SomeWare:** Didja like that software package I made for it?  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _Indeed, all operations improved in efficiency by 28%. Greater than your projections._  
 **SomeWare:** ∩(·ω·)∩ !!!!!  
 **PowerPlay:** I still question the wisdom of such a large resource investment in a single vehicle.  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _Your concerns are valid but the psychological effects far outweigh the logistical costs. We did vote on it after all._  
 **PowerPlay:** I will not withdraw my objection, but I of course must bow to the majority in this case.  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _We understand. Now, any new business?_  
 **Desire:** Hey, has anyone noticed there’s 8 users on the server instead of seven?  
 **_:** You guys are cute. (✿◠‿◠)  
 **SomeWare:** WTF?!?! (・・? | (＃ﾟДﾟ)  
 **Tickets:** Who the fuck is this?  
 **{ShadyBusiness has left the server.}  
{PowerPlay has left the server.}  
_:** Smart. You should all leave before I do something even crazier than infiltrating your IRC server. (*^3^)/~☆  
Desire: It must be Menace. We really should leave.  
 **{Desire has left the Server.}  
SomeWare:** Nobody hax me! You’ll pay for this! ┻━┻︵ヽ(`Д´)ﾉ︵ ┻━┻  
 **_:** ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
 **SomeWare:** Ok, I respect your emoji game though.  
 **{SomeWare has left the server.** }  
 **FreeDom:** Just don’t delete my torrents.  
 **_:** Oh, I’m about to do worse than that. ヽ(^。^)ノ  
 **{FreeDom was Banned by _.}  
Tickets:** Nice spook tactic, Menace. But you don’t have access to anything useful.  
 **_:** Are you sure? Then why’s your webcam on? (._.)  
 **{Tickets has Disconnected.}**  
 **_:** Ah, I’ve missed IRC servers.  
 **_:** It’s just us now dear Reginald. What are you going to do?  
 ** _Leviathan:_** _No real names._  
 **{_ was kicked by Leviathan for 120 seconds.}  
{Leviathan has left the server.}**  
 **_:** Aw, too bad. (T_T)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**The Villain: Menace**

**Xanadu, the City of Pure Capitalism.**

Conceived, Coordinated, Constructed by a coalition of six corporations, all contracted by Cronus Logistics Consolidated, itself jointly contracted by the three governments. The project: build and maintain a true freight and passenger rail network to service the entire continent. A project which has consumed and continues to consume trillions of dollars, more labor hours than anyone has bothered to calculate, and made or broken thousands of political and private careers over two decades. Xanadu now serves as the primary depot for the entire network, the largest rail network and therefore critical infrastructure system in the world.

The city itself occupies a special place in the nation, as three countries could not stand to have the central nervous system of such an indispensable part of their economies controlled by by the ever shifting governments of their allies. So XEZ, the Xanadu Economic Zone, was established. An independent economic and government entity, marginally answering to three governments(so, effectively, none of them), with very specific missions assigned to it: Maintain and manage the Continental Rail Network, govern the (eventually) millions of employees and citizens of multiple nations to moved to Xanadu to support it’s operations, remain neutral among the three governments. With a few strokes of a pen, Xanadu became the most politically relevant city on the continent, possibly in the world.

And it’s all yours.  
Ok, sort of.

You’ve done everything legally. There’s no actual laws in the city against bribery on a massive scale. Sure, maybe threats of violence could be called assault, but nobody was actually assaulted, by you. Some people had unfortunate falls. And it’s true that if the city council, which you are slowly replacing, decided to oust you they could. They’ve changed laws, but not enough. You’ve removed and replaced most of the vulnerable positions and civil servants you used to enact your plan. You’ve stolen effective control of the most massive network of infrastructure in the world. It’s your greatest heist ever, and you once stole an entire bank. (It’s still yours too. The Independent Credit Union of Evil has a sterling reputation for risk management and financial stability.)

But your position and your reforms are far from invulnerable.

The corporations still technically own the key facilities, the railways, infrastructure, and so on. You’re slowly wresting that control away from them, using their own laws and agreements with governments to do so, since they continuously lobbied to put the Xanadu government in charge of and give ownership to the systems and industries that support it. But that will take time. The city government, especially the council that you are slowly replacing with actually dedicated civil servants, could oust you if they were so motivated. But you have a much stronger hold there, and getting stronger all the time.

With a keystroke you wipe all devices still connected to that little IRC server, after cloning them for analysis of course.

You had your suspicions of course, if anyone was to pose a real threat to you it’d be the new heads of the corps you’d pushed out of city government. But now that you’ve confirmed it, and it seems their preparations are nearing completion, it’s time for action.

And by action, of course, you mean secret plots and covert operations to subvert your enemies and turn them against each other. Like that one time you got Flamestrike to try and arrest Pulsar in the middle of your gold heist. Good times.

Oh yeah. The funeral.

You’re not invited. And even though showing up uninvited is kind of y our thing, you’ve decided to stay in the office and watch via remote. You’ve given Mandy the day off and declared a city-wide day of mourning. As you turn on the feed, things are just getting started

The funeral service is extremely Old World. Flamestrike had been an Odinist it seemed, and managed to keep that fact private. Pulsar had known, though, and told you he’d wanted it kept secret to keep the white supremacists from getting, in his words “really fucking annoying”.

More and more layers to the man.

His funeral beir is constructed on a full scale longship. The service is a very modern interpretation of ancient burial rites. The visiting hero **Blæskjöldur** is there to oversee the service as well. She’s outfitted in ceremonial clothes, armor, and weapons, and lays more weapons and symbols of Flamestrike on his beir. Close friends bring gifts to lay on the beir as well.

You happen to know about several other features of the funeral. A number of pagan white nationalists, and some of their friends, had been caught online talking about attending the funeral to make some kind of statement, attempting to claim Flamestrike as a symbol of their “movement”. The extra security is invisible of course, your own tech, and the assistance of three psychics. One of whom you are told is actually a member of Pulsar’s team, though she won’t tell you which one. There’s going to be a nice crop of nasty little assholes in detention tonight. Legally, they won’t face any serious punishment. But you’ll have them permanently flagged.

And then it’s time for the eulogy.

Pulsar steps up next to the longship. She’s dressed in, well, you’ve never seen this before. It looks vaguely military. Black with gold buttons, there’s a boat cloak trimmed in silver, a high collar. A lot of the crowd are former cops in their old dress uniforms. You knew she had a goal in mind here, she just hadn’t said what. But she probably knew Flamestrike better than anyone else too.

“Flamestrike was a hero.” She starts, “Back when I was starting out, he taught me a lot. Investigation, though it was never my strong suit, how to fight with super powers, especially how to hold back.”

Her voice carries everywhere though the crowd, apparently without assistance from sound equipment. Very cool.

“But Flamestrike wasn’t my friend, he was my mentor, and a mean motherfucker too.” That got a faint chuckle from the old cop crowd. “But not my friend. Franklin Cooper, he was my friend. He was a real dick too.” More chuckles. “He could make it hard to be his friend. You had to want to get to know Frank, or you had to kinda have no choice but to deal with him and end up his friend. He used slurs too easily, didn’t like being challenged on his assumptions. Frank didn’t want to be an asshole, but you had to work to make him realize when he was being one.”

The crowd is nodding in agreement.

“But, for those who got to know him, we saw his intent was good. And anyone who knew his history, which I’m not going to air in public, figured out why he became the prick he was as an adult. Frank really wanted to be better, but he never set aside the time to work at it. There was always another threat, another villain. And after the riot, I’ve never seen Frank lower.”

Now the cops in the crowd are looking down, or trying to avoid each other’s eyes. Plenty of them had been marching behind Flamestrike that day.

“When I talked to him, he knew how badly he’d fucked up. Frank swore to me, swore on his old badge, he was going to do better, and he wasn’t going to use his powers until he was sure he’d met the standard he needed to. He was doing that. I met with him any time I was in town he told me he hated every minute of it. Facing your flaws isn’t pleasant and all of here know Frank had plenty. And he stuck by his oath. When he could have incinerated his attacker Frank fought hand and foot to stay alive but he didn’t use power he didn’t feel he could be responsible with.”

The crowd is muttering in surprise. You’re surprised. Not because of the revelation, but because of the lie. And she’s saying it straight out, giving nothing away but pure sincerity. Usually she’s a _terrible_ liar! She _knows_ what **Blæskjöldur** said about magic suppressing his powers. But oh, this is perfect, so often magic relies on the mental state of the caster, if the assassin doubts their abilities even a little. She may not have been the best investigator, but she knows fighting. This is a gorgeous feint. A perfect fakeout to throw an enemy off balance.

You’ve never been more attracted to her in your life.

“Every one of us needs to live up to Frank’s example. Be better. Or work at it. Even if we never achieve it, we need to make the effort. Overcome our backgrounds, what we were taught by bad sources and ill intentions, to make our city better for everyone. Frank was making the effort, but he won’t have the chance to see the results. We need to be what Frank wanted to be.”

With that, she steps away from the longship. Several dozen burly cops move forward and heave it out onto the water. **Blæskjöldur** casts a rune and a wind picks up, pushing the ship far out into the water. Once it’s a good distance away, Pulsar points at it.

She begins to glow, her hair floats, the cloak rises and spreads out around her as gold and silver light flows around her. A point of brilliant white light forms at the tip of her finger. Then-  
  
 ** _FTAAAMMN~!_**

A thin beam of light streaks out across the water, the power of the blast is still enough to kick up a long trough of water below it before it strikes the boat.

**_FYOOOSH~!_ **

The bloat ignites, suddenly forming a column of flame that shoots into the sky, higher and higher. The whole city will see it. People hundreds of miles away will see it. Space stations will see is and probably report an orbital hazard. Water flashes to steam next to the column of fire, boiling further away, a colossal roar carries across the water out into the city.

And then it’s gone and a cheer erupts from the funeral crowd. Nobody seems to notice that Pulsar and **Blæskjöldur** are gone.

 _Later_...

When Pulsar returns(she’s been sleeping at your “cell” lately, it’s been glorious) you leap into her arms and kiss her.

“I’m so proud of you, that was an _incredible_ lie.” You gush.

“Oh wow, really? I was sure it wouldn’t work. I tried to do what you said you do, believe the lie when you’re saying it but...”

You gasp, “You....you took my advice?!” You don’t deserve her. She’s too perfect.

She looks adorably embarrassed, “Look, I’m not proud of lying. But Frank always said to use everything you can to your advantage. He’d have wanted me to turn everything about his death to the greater good if I can.”

Flamestrike may have been a prick and then some, but he’d always had a natural understanding of the broader aspects of superheroing.

“Is it weird that I’m kinda turned on by your new skill at lying?”

“It is.”

“Will you tell me another one?”

She takes a breath and then, with a straight face, and perfect sincerity says “I actually don’t like pickles.”

The shiver goes down your spine and spreads through your limbs. Being held in her arms, as she tells lies is...really hot.

“Another.” You whisper.

“She-Ra is overrated.”

Oof...that one makes you physically squirm.

“One more.” You fairly beg.

“Uhmm.....flying is boring.”

Oh gods...you can’t take it anymore. “Please...take me.”

She grins, fairly like a villain in her mischievousness, “I don’t want to.”

As she carries you to bed, you wonder what you did to deserve her.

_Even Later....._

She’s sleeping. One thing you’d never discovered until you started dating, was that she actually did need sleep. With her power, she’d explained, she could go without for a long time. But eventually, it became a psychological need, more than physical. The human psyche can’t cope without sleep. She looks so beautiful sleeping, free of literally the weight of the world on her shoulders. Strong, muscular shoulders....

You pick up your mobile terminal from beside the bed and text Mind.

 **Problematic:** It’s time to counterattack. Will you arrange my meetings please?  
 **Mind:** You’re being very polite. I must assume the sex was extremely satisfying.  
 **Problematic:** Just arrange the fucking meetings.  
 **Mind:** Of course.

**_That Night....._ **

You arrive at the bar right on time, but nobody spots you. You flow in right behind a group of patrons and slip into the shadows. Finding a booth with just the wrong lighting, exactly as you knew it would be when you chose this place.

Midnight and Mindy { _The Irredeemable Possum Girl_ } enter with less subtlety than you, but that’s not important. Mindy knows this routine. She knows where to look and how to act. It’s a game you both played many times in the old days. The wild days when you were both younger, more desperate and less wise. She is no less an anarchist than she was in those days, but she’s more pragmatic. And Midnight, well, her old group may have been mostly driven from the city, but from her behavior lately, she’s become more moderate, at least towards your own government. Though, her hatred of the capitalist class is no less fiery.

The Mayor and two terrorists walk into a bar....

And Mindy’s outfit is really bringing back memories. She’s back to her old punk gear. The leather jacket with the spikes, which you _know_ she keeps a set of steel[brass is for cowards] knuckles in. The black cargo pants, those hefty combat boots with the steel toes, that ragged crop-top you gave her back when you’d almost started dating, the one that just says “EVIL” in block letters across the front. Her tail is out and free, her fur and claws on full display. Though small and slight of build, she manages to be more intimidating that the taller and apparently more buff Midnight.

Midnight is no slouch, of course. She’s all in black, matching her pure black skin. A black vest over black plain t-shirt and black jeans that, frankly, look too tight to move easily in. Though you happen to know she took down a corporate sponsored gang single-handedly in a similar outfit, so she clearly knows how to move, is strong enough, or knows how to modify such clothing, to make fighting easy. She’s one of the most skilled hand-to-hand combatants in the city. Which makes sense since besides her control over light and general electromagnetism, her powers only extend to her agility and reflexes.

The one thing you didn’t quite expect was they would enter holding hands. So, that’s why Mindy’s been so chipper lately. Another difference from the old days, you wouldn’t have wanted to care about the personal lives of your minions. But now...you wonder when you started to care...or when you started noticing you cared.

They arrive at your table, Mindy always knows how to spot you, and sit down.

“I recommend the burgers, wings are nothing special here.” You say, as the waitress notices them, instead of you, and approaches. You won’t be eating, it’s part of your mystique. {Granted Mindy has seen you literally gush over Pulsar and knows better than to think you’re actually cool, but that’s not the point.}

Burgers and beers ordered, it’s time to talk business.

“Wow, this really brings back memories.” Mindy comments. 

“No kidding,” says Midnight, “I swear bars in this town get half their business from clandestine meetings between supers and villains.”

“It’s really only about thirty percent,” You answer, “I’ve seen the tax records.”

“They used to say things like that too. They’ve always been linked into the city’s finances somehow.” Mindy brags.

“Actually, I used to lie. Like...a lot. About almost everything.”

“But you always managed to be right? Sometimes things were worse than you claimed.” Mindy seems perplexed.

“It’s not my fault. The city government and the corps were just really good at being awful.”

“So, what’s this all about?” Midnight asks, “You didn’t have us meet here just to relive old times. No matter how much crazy fun we all had back then.

“Mindy, I think it’s time you took a vacation. You’ve done a great job setting up my staff and it’s time you reaped the rewards of your reduced workload.”

Mindy smirks, “Oh? And where should I spend this newfound free time.”

“Oh, I don’t know, go visit old friends. I hear old _Bomba Tiran_ is back in town.”

Mindy grins unpleasantly. Sharp teeth gleaming in the dim light of the bar, “Oh, that should be fun. We’ll party like it’s 2005 again.”

“Exactly.”

You slip out of the bar as the food is arriving, leaving Mindy to explain to Midnight what’s going on. Midnight will remember the events of 2005, almost everyone in the city remembers them in some way, especially the security contractors who protect the city’s power supplies.

One who probably doesn’t remember, because he was a teenager at the time and attending the Atlas Heavy Infrastructure Corporation _Management Training High School_ , is Torrence Howard Lindon-Smith, the newest hotshot young CEO of Atlas.

Sometimes known online as PowerPlay.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**A few days later...**

When you find Rikvi Odinsdottir, she is interviewing a badly injured Watch Constable. A Super in her mid-20′s who came to the watch from the Police. A quick lookup in the database reveals her name is Sally Wallace and she’s a force-field projector with mildly boosted physical abilities.

You’re there in the shadows when Rikvi steps away from the Constable, who is being carried away on a stretcher.

“Hello there, Menace.”

“This is why I don’t like magic.” You say. “It tends to bypass camouflage technology.”

“I think you triggered my ward on purpose.” She responds. “You have faced powerful magic users successfully in the past.”

Well, she’s done her homework.

“What do you want?” She asks.

“So far this mysterious attacker has severely injured more than half the supers on the Watch, undermining my ability to respond to a city-wide crisis. You and Mercury have no leads on their identity. I do.”

“Oh? You should share this new lead.”

“You need to be investigating Moira Satine Derringer, CEO of Venus International. Especially look into her little sister, Mortia. The official word is, she’s dead.”

“The dead are often most troublesome. I shall speak with my aunt.”

You’re not sure you understand that. Is she talking about Freya? No she’s his daughter. Who are Odin’s sisters? Fortunately, your mask doesn’t show your confusion.

“Do what you need, but I also need Mercury to interview the all the injured Constables and give them one of these.” You offer the Daughter of Odin a small pill bottle. “Don’t ask what they are. It’ll ruin the surprise.”

“I often enjoy surprises.”

You don’t answer, because the mask of micro-machines that gave her the bottle while you slipped out of the ally, collapses and flows away in the shadows.

“Hmm...rude.” She mutters as she turns back towards the ally entrance and returns to Mercury.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Later that day...**

“Um...I’m sorry, Mayor, why do you want me to wait until _this_ particular date to have these warrants served?”

Your brand new City Attorney, looking smart in his fitted three piece suit in shades of violet, blue, and yellow gold turban, paces your office mechanically. He does a lot of his walking mechanically, assisted as he is by the set of mechanical braces clamped around his waist and legs. The indicator and servo lights glow blue. His powered chair stands in the corner, cooling fans whirring gently as it charges. He strokes his beard as he regards you, fairly towering over your desk. Few people have to personal presence to tower over you in your own territory. It’s one of the reasons you selected him for the position.

The quiet fury of certain specific members your few remaining captive city councilors as you “gently persuaded” them to confirm a Pakistani Sikh man was just a bonus. They’ll all be gone in a few months so it’s important to savor the little humiliations you inflict on them while you can.

“Frankly, I find it difficult to believe you do not have some nefarious plan in mind with such specific timing requested.”

A highly refined, and unyielding, sense of ethics and morality is not unique to Sikhism, but Ranbir Singh certainly exemplifies it.

“You doubt my evidence.” You say.

“So far it is all perfectly confirmed, which is why I do not trust it.” He responds, “You clearly had all of this at hand already, and have been waiting for some opportunity to deploy it. So far your evidence is not in question, your motives are. So why should I not simply ignore your instructions and move forward at my own discretion, as you promised me I would be allowed to when you asked me to accept this job.”

“Because Pulsar is my girlfriend.”

You have to give him credit Ranbir is truly a man of absolutely unflappable composure. He merely blinks at the revelation.

“And, if you’ll trust me on this, I’ll never ask you to do anything like it again. You can ask me any favor you want, until I’m dead. I’m telling you this because I need you to understand how much I trust you, and Pulsar trusts you. because I asked her if I could drop that little fact during this discussion. We’re going to let the world know eventually but for now...”

He shakes his head and goes over to sit down on his power chair. There’s a faint “ping” as the power source reconnects with the braces and they fold away back into the chair itself. Then, responding to the faint movements of his torso, the chair unplugs itself and he wheels over to your desk.

“Very well. As a favor to you, and only because none of these crimes require urgent action. And I suppose it will not hurt to have the former mayor in my debt when I run for the office in a few years.”

“You’ve got my vote, I don’t want to do this forever.”

“And now I suppose I must go home and _not_ tell my husband he was right all along.”

“Well...we can probably trust _him_ too.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**That night...**

Bifrost, aka Leon Oldfang (which is an objectively _very_ cool name in your opinion, you may have yelled about it when Mind told you, just a little), is strolling through a park tonight. You don’t envy him his situation. While his sister gets to pal around with a famous superhero, investigating brutal assaults and picking fights with the several local villains still active in the city, he is forced to refrain from using his abilities in combat, attend group and individual counseling sessions, and do community service. His community service, you know, does not include battling supervillains.

Maybe teenagers shouldn’t battle supervillains.

Maybe teenagers shouldn’t become supervillains.

But then where would you be?

Better not dwell on that right now. Better dwell on the coming crisis and this boy’s role in it. Especially when he’s been astonishingly patient in waiting for the right moment to charge in to crush evil and rescue his love.

Elliot Fletcher.

Well you’ve got to hand it to him, Bifrost sure had an instinct for falling in love with the most dramatic peer possible. Young Fletcher is a student leader, an organizer with uncanny political instincts and an apparent talent for effective media engagement that rivals even the most cunning and hardened political operatives. With the information you have on him, it’s not hard to see why he’s so motivated, and what made him need to grow up so quickly.

He’ll probably be president someday.

Or he’ll raise up a president of his choosing.

Which is better?

Watching him now, you can almost see the edges of the glamour that disguises Leon as Bifrost. Legios has been helpful in teaching you how to spot it.

“Hello Bifrost.” You say, keeping the vocal disruptor’s effect to a minimum as you glide out of the shadows.

He stops, instantly shifting into a guard stance you recognize as one of Pulsar’s. It’s perfect for a flyer, balanced and ready to break into flight for counterattack from any direction. She did mentor him for some time, after all.

“What do you want?”

“To help, of course.” You let the slick, wheedling tone creep into your voice, the young heroes _hate_ it.

“I find that difficult to believe. My sister insists you are not who I think you are, and Pulsar will not take action to remove you from power. So I really am hoping you will give me an excuse right now.”

Oh he is seething. Excellent.

“I did not kidnap your boyfriend, Leon.”

Lightning arcs around his clenched fists, dances through his hair. “How do you know that name? How do you know...he was kidnapped?”

“I have my ways. Just like I have my ways of finding out who has taken him, and where.”

“Tell me.” He’s trembling. Perfect.

“Not quite yet. I need something from you first. Your dear sister has been entertaining, but she is causing trouble in my city. I want the two of you gone.”

“We’ll be happy to leave when you tell us where Elliot is.”

“I will know in twenty-four hours.”

“Good. Now go away.”

“Ah, not so fast.”

“ _What?”_ He growls.

“I wanted to let you know I’ve asked the Watch to grant you special permission to use your powers should you see some major crime occurring and you can safely intervene. That is all.”

His eyes narrow, “Why do that? Why tell me personally?”

"Just giving a very important guest to my fair city a little personal attention. Is that so wrong?”

The bolt of lightning that rips through the veil of Machine Weave projecting your form destroys a tree instead. He’s primed and ready.

Hopefully this will be the last time someone uses him as a catspaw to further their own plans. It doesn’t make you feel better to be the one doing it, of course. But until all your plans come to fruition, your position is vulnerable. The city is vulnerable. And you have never been one to shrink from using all the resources available to achieve your goals. At least his target will not be so insurmountable as...well...yourself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Later...**

You settle into your command chair and with Mind, go over your checklist.

Seven corporations arrayed against you, the original founders of Xanadu. All now lead by fresh young executives who’ve spent too much time learning to extract profits from the colossal achievements of their predecessors, and not enough time learning how to maintain control over those assets. The old execs, they knew how, knew what their company’s had built and the threats you and those like you had posed to their control. Oh sure, they’d been every bit as exploitative as the successors they’d trained, but they knew in their aged, brittle, nicotine stained bones, how to maintain control of their creation and the vigilance they required.

You’d taught it to them. Taught it with every kidnapping, every nefarious plan to take over one part of the city or another. Then, when you’d begun to formulate your ultimate plan, you’d added new goals to those lessons, technology inserted into their systems, moles in their staffs, their companies, in the city government they’d been required to set up by international agreement. And even then all you’d been able to do was orchestrate bigger heists, steal and redesign better technology, grow your threat level to match Pulsar.

And then they’d gotten sloppy.

They’d retired on their glut of profits and let younger, more energetic protege’s take over.

People who may have been smart and tenacious and devious, but didn’t have a decades of experience handling Xanadu, and especially a decade and a half of dealing with you and your occasional allies, to inform their instincts. They might be your peers in age, but you are their superior in front-line experience.

And they do not know how precarious their control really is.

But you know exactly how precarious your position is.

It’s all very Art of War, and you know your enemy just as well as you know yourself. You are as ready as any mortal can be on the even of battle.

“Ok Mind, begin your program.”

“Executing.”

Mind’s response has every bit of villainous glee you get when you’re about to pull a major rug out from under some hapless hero’s feet. You used to do it all the time to Pulsar.

Then she learned to fly and competing with her actually became a challenge.

Maybe that’s when you started to fall in love with her.

Analyze it later. Time for bed.


	8. The Battle of Xanadu: All War is [Performance Art]…

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final battle between Menace and their adversaries. All is revealed at last. Probably. {Unless I forgot to reveal some things.}

You can’t move.

You’re stuck, the fucking hacker brat (he may be 35 but he’s still a brat) is laughing at you in his godawful flying super-suit and you’re stuck. He hacked your suit. Holy shit he really hacked your suit! How the fuck did you not see this coming? Why did you have _anything_ wireless in this thing? Air. Gap. Encryption you Idiot! And the ONE time you break your own rule, it bites you in the…well the whole body really, but also your pride.

The lights of the city are dark, black forms of high rises and skyscrapers blotting out the stars, reflecting the flickering lights of super-fights going on all over the city. You know that someone has brought several hundred “police” units into the city and they’re heading for Watch House #1. In the distance, the form of a colossal mecha is glowing with its own running lights. Approaching. As inevitable as gravity.

Kind of reminds you of another time you couldn’t move recently…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Earlier today...**

You can’t move.

You’re standing there, staring at it. The time is now, you need to prepare, they’re coming for you, coming for your city, probably coming to kill you, and you can’t, fucking, move.

It’s embarrassing, really. The great Menace! Terror of Xanadu! The Tyrant of All Evil! [Nobody calls you that but you’ve often wished they would.] The one who leapt to the defense of the city when the mighty Pulsar was laid low! Who battled heroes in the streets and the skies without a second thought! Who actually worked up the courage to tell the woman they loved how they really felt even thought the experience was utterly _mortifying_ at the time and now when she laughs you feel like your soul has been cleansed of all your sins…

…getting off topic here.

And now Menace who’s battled all comers every time can’t get into a special prototype combat suit because for once the battle isn’t personal, it’s for an entire city, for citizens who somehow actually believe in the reformation, both personal and policies, of the villain that once threatened their peaceful lives on a regular basis. To actually be defending not just yourself but millions from real tyranny…

How does Pulsar _do_ this _all the time!?_

_“I make it personal.”_

Oh right, that’s how she put it, what was the rest?

_“When I go to fight, I don’t really think about how much I’m defending, all the individuals the people, I make it personal. It’s My World, that’s My City, those are My People. Even when it’s an alien world, city, and people. Kind of selfish but…it works.”_

_“Where did you learn to do that?”_

_“Do what?”_

_“Speak with capitalization.”_

_She smiled, “Silly, I learned it from you.”_

_You’d wanted to ask more, like about the alien worlds. But right after she’d rolled over onto you and rational thought had kind of ceased for a while and you’d never gotten around to asking afterwards._

Right then.

“This is My City.” You announce.

“These are My People!” You declare.

Holy shit it’s working! You step towards your suit and it opens for you automatically.

“I have taken it all from you! It’s mine! You dare attack me in this way!?” You step into the suit and it begins to close around you in your skintight control suit.

“Your assault is offensive! Your crude machinations an insult to my person! I have wrested My Home from your vile clutches and you will **not** reclaim it! Not while I stand!”

The suit closes around you. The Machine Weave and Shroud activate, cloaking your armored form in darkness. Black 2.5, just and update, you wouldn’t presume to claim a totally new version. Stuart Semple had been proud when you showed him. Naturally Anish Kapoor is legally barred from using it. Of course, he’d need your micro-machines to even make it but that’s hardly the point.

It’s a fully rebuilt prototype, entirely capable of matching Pulsar move for move. Energy is just fuel, even kinetic force. It’s halfway controlled by AI via quantum entangled link, totally unhackable so long as your AI doesn’t get hacked. Which would take another AI and a lot of time. That thought prompts you to notice the little red indicator on the bottom left of your HUD. Glaring at you as if your failure to notice it immediately is some kind of personal affront.

Oh right, Mind is busy. Busy with a program so complex it’s taking every single processor cycle they have to execute it. For once since their birth, Mind doesn’t have time for you.

No matter. The suit’s onboard processors should be plenty. You’re not fighting Pulsar today, probably not ever again, for that matter.

With a thought you kick on the repulse thrusters and blast through the wall of your prison cell, to battle.

[That’s not going to look good on your next parole hearing but fuck it, you needed the drama.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Now...**

Oh man he’s really laughing it up. Looks a little hysterical, actually, this guy is not ok at all. He’s a hacker, he owns and marginally “runs” a tech company. He’s not used to combat. Your main thruster feels like it’s a bit unstable, maybe if you lose altitude, you’ll fall out of range his hack will lose connection and you can regain control.

All around, the battle for the city is raging. In the distance, the colossal ExoTech mech approaches. You knew Reginald had something big planned, but damn, this is next level. Maybe you’ll grant him a tiny iota of respect when this is over. Assuming you survive.

It’s not looking good. Someone called an emergency session of the City Council, not to address the crisis, but apparently in a bid to oust you. That’s to be expected, of course. But it should have happened tomorrow. Someone got spooked. Hopefully the councilors marginally friendly towards you, or at least hostile to the corps, will stall things long enough for the battle to actually end. The supers of the city have turned out to face local villains and mercenary supers. But they’re getting pushed back. You enemies don’t have to win they just need the city council to remove you on some legal grounds. But right now, they’re winning.

You spot a group of Watch Constables, supers and regulars with anti-super weapons they’re not supposed to have by law, standing their ground atop Watch House #1.

Holy Shit is that Black Guard? She really accepted your invitation at the last minute….

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Earlier, not long after the other earlier...**

Mercury is standing on the roof of Watch House #1 overseeing defensive preparations. Citizens are already being evacuated by regular Constables to shelters, shelters Menace was apparently working on from day one, if reports of their completeness are accurate. About three hours ago, a piloting student on their solo flight reported “a giant mech, like something from an anime.” approaching the city. Then Menace had blasted out of prison in some new ultra-dark combat suit and begun issuing orders to all the Watch divisions while a crisis response unit practically materialized fully assembled and staffed inside Watch House #1. How many secret rooms does this place have anyway?

“Well damn, they weren’t lying for once!”

The rough, contralto voice behind them sounds vaguely familiar. When Mercury turns to see who it is, they almost stagger. She hasn’t been in the news in over a decade, and hasn’t been seen in the city in almost twenty years.

**Black Guard.**

AKA Latisha Harper

Formerly, Detective Lieutenant Harper of Xanadu Police Violent Crimes Division.

An icon of the so-called Silver Age of Xanadu-based superheroes. She’s standing before Mercury like she’s been lifted from her old comic books. The black armored plates, the convex round shield, also black, the boots she used to stomp neo-nazis and white supremacists into the pavement after she quite the police force. The gun, a 1911 Colt, at her side which she used while fighting for the Rojava Independent Authority after the Super Revolts collapsed Syria, Turkey and Iraq all at once. The scar across her cheek and up her temple, a souvenir of her first and only battle with Vampire Hitler, whom she stomped into dust after staking him with a broken shovel handle in her own home. She’s older now, her dark face more weathered, but it’s her.

“Pick yer jaw up off the floor kid, you’ll catch flies.”

Mercury snaps their moth closed, biting their tongue in the process.

“Ow, fuck.”

“But, it’s nice to see kids know their history these days.” She smirks at them.

“Uh, pardon me, Black Guard, ma’am, but you’re pretty much a legend so if you don’t mind I’ll be slightly stunned for a few more moments.”

“Nope, no time for that uh…I think it’s Mercury, right? Neutral pronouns, material shapeshifting, first volunteer for CSD, right?”

“Yes?”

“Who knows when the first attack with show up. Menace begged me to come out of retirement, and hey, I’m only fifty-five, I got a couple fights left in me, so I’m here to take command of the CSD.”

“Uhm…”

“Gonna stand there gawping or are let the legend take command?”

What was it they’d been told in training? Worry less about what’s lawful and more about what’s right and what’s got to be done right away. Ok then.

“Ok, you’re in command. What should we do?”

“You already did most of it ‘cept one thing. I know the Viking girl ain’t left the city yet. So why havn’t’chya called ‘er?”

Mercury’s brows furrow in confusion, “ **Blæskjöldur**? But she left with her brother to-“

“I was awaiting his return and felt the call to battle.” Says a voice above them. One Mercury knows well from the past few days. Rikvi Odinsdottir, known as Blæskjöldur.

She floats down from above, a faint outline of raven’s wings shimmering in the air behind her as she lands, kitted out for battle, helm on her head, spear glowing faintly blue.

“You felt it too, Svartur Skjöldur, or you would not have accepted Menace’s invitation to command the CSD. Odin’s call to battle sings in your blood as much as mine.”

“Not my god.”

“The song of the warrior is the same in every realm.”

Mercury would have liked to watch this exchange all day, the much shorter and **much** younger stocky Viking girl in her battle gear, fearsomely locking eyes with the older, darker, more stoic woman towering over her.

Black Guard could probably tower over someone standing above her from the bottom of a mine shaft.

But, there were things to do. And Mercury noticed her spear was missing.

“Rikvi, where’s your spear?”

“Well, while I was waiting…”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Still earlier than was just indicated….**

Menace’s information had panned out all right. And yet, just as Rikvi and Mercury[She’d learned Mercury’s name was Raven, Rave to their friends, and then had she had been told to call them Rave, which pleased Rikvi since that meant they had become friends] had been getting ready to raid the attacker’s hideout, the city’s sirens had begun wailing.

And _then_ Leon had found her, but only to tell her he had found Elliot and he needed her to wait just a little while and they would be able to get out of this city. This, of course, was good. Yet now it bothered Rikvi. She would have been all to happy to leave here a couple weeks ago. Now, having worked with the CSD of their Watch, worked with Rave, gotten to know this city under Mayor Menace and learned how things had improved for the people…she wondered if it was right to abandon the place so easily. Many Constables, not just supers, had been assaulted by the mysterious attacker.

As she battled any random villain they came across, racking up property damage like skeeball points, she and Rave had found more and more evidence to indicate Mortia was indeed alive. The genetic testing of the blood and hunk of flesh bitten off by Flamestrike during his demise had revealed very strange genetics indeed. And while the human DNA was there, woven into it were the strands of Jotun genetic material, which Rikvi had recognized.

All of it leading up to right now, as Rikvi stalks her prey. Something she is sure this assassin is not used to dealing with. She and Mercury hadn’t discovered all the details, but it seems Mortia is Moira Derringer’s half-sister by her mother and a Jotun, an Ice Giant if her blue skin is any indication.

Even as the city scrambled to prepare for…whatever was coming, Mortia is stalking her own prey. A middle-aged man in a Traffic Watch uniform directing people to shelter. Normally, Rikvi is not this stealthy, she needs two runes to hide her presence from the naturally attuned magic senses of even a half-Jotun. It is a delicate and frustrating process, but for the moment, with two runes bending reality to her will, she technically doesn’t exist in reality anymore. But that will all shatter if she makes just the wrong move. She needs to wait for just the right moment…

…there it is. Mortia has cast a spell. Hmm…her rune magic is rough, unrefined, she seems to use it only to boost her natural Jotun-inherited talents at illusion. Rikvi has seen Jotun-magic, this is…not very good. It seems Moira’s secret upbringing has robbed Mortia of much of her heritage. This alone, Rikvi judges an unforgivable crime, but to further it by raising her into the role of an assassin is beyond the pale.

The spell is drawing the Constable into the alleyway. Rikvi can’t see what it is, but the effect is obvious. The victim will be drawn in by some distraction, and Mortia will attack.

“Enough is enough.” She says quietly.

She raises _Gungirli_ , the spear hums in her hands, responding to her will. With a cry that shatters her camouflage spell she hurls the weapon, aiming just in front of the ensorcelled Constable. It strikes with a flash and he startles back, then, seeing Mortia with her long daggers ready, turns and runs. The half-Jotun assassin whirls on Rikvi, standing on the edge of the roof above her, and _leaps_.

The leap carries her to the rooftop and she stands before Rikvi, whose spear has reappeared in her hand.

“So, you’re the one who’s been stalking me.” She growls. At attacks.

Rikvi, as her spear whirls in her hands to defend against the seeking blades of the assassin, is a little startled by her appearance. She’s young, much younger than she expected, she’s Rikvi’s age at most. There was no data on her date of birth, Rikvi had simply assumed she was not much younger than her half-sister, who was now in her forties.

In the instant of a pause in Mortia’s assault, Rikvi counter-attacks. Now the gleaming point of her spear seeks her assailant, slashes through the inky black cloak that whirls around her trying to baffle the deadly point. The cloak dissolves into black mist and fades away, giving Rikvi her first good look at her opponent.

She’s beautiful. Tall and slender now her cloak of darkness is gone. Her fine features are blue[the bite Flamestrike took out of her seems to have already healed], as would be expected of an Ice Giant heritage, and her large, expressive eyes that glare at Rikvi coldly are dark, almost black. She has the loveliest tall, slim and delicate, pointed ears Rikvi has ever seen, and she’s been to Vanaheim.

“ _Ó nei,”_ She whispers, “ _Hún er helvíti svakaleg.”*_

“What?” The assassin demands.

_Right, she’s trying to kill me right now._ Rikvi reminds herself. _I should do something about that._

“Mortia! Stop this!” Rikvi orders, instead of repeating herself, because that would be embarrassing and absolutely not appropriate right now. “Your sister is a monster who imprisoned you. You do not have to do this!”

Mortia counterattacks with a silent snarl, and Rikvi falls back, _Gungirti_ humming in her hands, Mortia’s blades sparking as they glance off the enchanted wood. She’s clearly not accustomed to fighting in the open. Closed spaces are her territory. Her tactical thinking has been neglected if she came up to this open rooftop, and isn’t even trying to retreat and draw Rikvi into territory that favors her training. Rikvi doesn’t need her shield, she only needs to end this fight on her terms.

“Why do you obey her?” Rikvi demands, whirling her spear and striking Mortia with the haft. The blow sending her flying.

Mortia lands on her feet, skidding to a stop. “You don’t understand anything! I’m an abomination! They murdered my parents!” She shouts, “She protected me! I owe her!”

“A lie!” Rikvi leaps into another assault driving, Mortia back towards edge of the roof. “We found out everything! Both your parents live! She stole you from them!”

“Stop it!” Mortia screams and hurls one of her daggers at Rikvi.

It’s a clear attempt at distraction. But she’s never fought a warrior in armor before. The dagger, simple steel, glances off Rikvi’s scale armored shoulder. Her next strike with the butt of the spear knocks the young assassin from the edge, out into the air over the ally. Rikvi leaps after her, spearpoint leading the way. They slam into the pavement together, Rikvi driving her spear into the pavement, straight through the center of Mortia’s chest.

Rikvi sighs as she stands over Mortia’s prone, pinned, form.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be back for you. Just rest.”

*[Translation from Icelandic] “Oh no, she’s fucking gorgeous.”**

**Icelandic doesn’t seem to have a translation for “fucking” so it turned it into “damn” but the intent is there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Back to just regular earlier...**

“You _killed_ her?!” Mercury exclaims.

“And _left_ her there?!” Black Guard adds.

“What? No, she is not dead! Did I not tell you of my spear?” Rikvi asks in confusion. “It does not kill unless I wish it so. She is merely asleep, pinned in place but unharmed. The spear will protect her until I return.”

“Rikvi, dear,” Mercury says with a sigh, “That’s really fucked up. You gotta lead with the magic properties of your spear next time you tell that story. It’s also fucked up that you pinned her in place with your magic spear but at least she’s unconscious.”

“Yes, she will dream and the Ravens will clean the lies from her.”

“What Ravens are y-”

Black Guard interrupts before Mercury can ask more questions with answers they won’t like. “Instead of that lets get ready for whatever bullshit is about to come down on this city hmm? Now, **Blæskjöldur** isn’t it?”

“Yes, and your pronunciation is excellent, I must say.”

“Thanks. Since you’re a frontline fighter I want you patrolling the area around Watch House #1, we’ve got a big shelter under here and I don’t want anyone getting too close. I don’t suppose Bifrost will be joining us?”

“Well…he may…” Rikvi looks speculative, “It depends on how long his rescue mission takes. But then he can travel nearly anywhere he knows about or can see almost instantly.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Meanwhile...**

Bifrost stood victorious amidst the sparking, smoking ruins of the final combat drone. It’d been a massive machine that proved to be no match for an assailant that can teleport around it at will, strike it with magic hammers, and shock it with magical lightning that doesn’t care how well grounded or shield its systems are.

It was like fighting the final boss of a game on easy mode.

With overpowered weapon mods installed.

And cheat codes enabled.

His hammers vanished in a puff of glitter as he strode up to the final vault door.

“You can’t do this to me!” The voice calling itself “Digital Monk” screamed at him. “You’re cheating!”

“You know, my sister always says if you’re not cheating, you’re not playing the game properly.” He touches the door’s control, [why is there even a manual control he can touch?] and discharges a surge of lightning into it, causing the door to open. “But she runs shell games on tourists in her spare time, so what does she know?”

The vault door rolls aside, revealing a…game room? Before Bifrost has a chance to take in the couches, game consoles with TV’s, computers, and table games, there’s a shout.

“Leon!”

Then he’s watching Elliot leap over a couch and run to him. He catches him in a tight embrace as he’s kissed rather more fiercely than he’s used to. It takes a few moments for him to register that he’s also being shouted at by an angry…roomba, bumping furiously against his boot.

“I will destroy you!” the little round cleaning robot shouts.

“Uh…Elliot? What’s this?”

“That’s…Monk. He’s apparently a cleaning robot and “tactical genius” according to him. But Leon, that’s not the point. You’ve gotta go help Menace!”

“Wh…what?”

“Monk likes to talk, he claims his ‘master’ is someone called SomeWare, some kind of supreme hacker, and he’s figured out how to take down Menace. I guess he and his allies are planning on attacking Xanadu. Today!”

Bifrost blinks, trying to process everything. Being stuck in effective limbo for weeks, suddenly knowing where to go to find Elliot, Eliiot’s kiss (oh gods he’s still reeling a little), and his sudden revelation about a hacker that can take down Menace’s tech. He steps back and takes a deep breath.

“Ok ok….uhm…First I’ve gotta get you safe.”

“Well I’m safe here but…if we’re going can I take Monk with me?”

Bifrost looks down at the furious little cleaning robot, still assaulting his boot.

“Won’t the hacker use it to track you down again?”

“He already knows who I am and who you are, besides, I know how to disable his wireless capability. I think he’s lonely, that guy never came around here again after he dropped me off. I’d have been bored out of my skull playing video games and binging Netflix if he wasn’t here with me.”

“Binging…you didn’t finish She-Ra without me did you?!”

“No….I did finish Dragon Prince and Kipo though.”

“Oh…well…I mean since we agreed, I did too but…ok fine you can bring the weird robot with.”

“Yay!” Elliot snatches up the angry little vacuum. “Ok, let’s go.”

A few minutes and then a bunch more minutes explaining to Elliot’s astonished parents who their son’s boyfriend really was and what that was going to mean from now on, and Bifrost is teleporting back to Xanadu. _(Which brings the readers up to regular earlier again….)_

The battle is already in full swing by now. Super and armed CSD Constables are battling other supers on the rooftops and streets of the city. People are stilly hurrying to safety. The sun has almost set…and that’s when the lights go out.

“Oh, what now…”  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Much earlier, days ago even….**

Old Bomba Tiran, the Bomb Tyrant, as he used to be known when he was an active villain and not just a purveyor of illicit explosive toys, is a brutish, slovenly, vile old man with gross habits and a thick Ukranian accent. Mindy thinks he’d be played by someone like Peter Stomare if their adventures ever get made into a movie.

He’s always been one of Mindy’s favorites.

“Oh ho~ You need explosives old Bomba has explosives! Come! Come!”

The doddering old man waves them inside. Mindy and Midnight enter, arm in arm, which makes the old arms deal chuckle lewdly.

“Mindy, this guy’s gross, are you sure we need to buy from him? I know a few arms dealers myself…”

“Those fools?! Pha!” Bomba spits on the floor, “Stupid! You get, what, shitty plastique? Old leftovers from Cold War maybe? Lucky if you get Embrium explosives to counter super powers! Hah!”

Mindy pats her new girlfriend’s arm. Her strong, muscular arm…and shakes herself out of her distraction.

“It’s true babe, your dealers never could get the really good stuff.”

“Look! Look!” Bomba thrusts a gnarled hand clutching a brick of plastic explosive towards Midnight. “ElectroPlast! Chemical EMP bomb!”

He tosses it aside and rummages around in the shelves of the rail car they’re in. Mindy’s never known how he manages to keep all his stock mobile, but she’d always had to meet him somewhere new.

“Hah! Look here!” He hands Midnight a plain looking semi-auto pistol. It’s the perfect size for her hands. “A gift! My own design, uses FN five-point-seven ammo. Never jam. Never misfire. Integrated silencer. Very accurate too!” He pushes an ammo box towards her. “Unradium rounds! Non-lethal, works on most supers and regulars! My own composition!”

“Uh…thanks, been a few years since I carried a gun but…”

She turns as she hears a hug weapon being hefted next to her. Mindy is lifting what looks like some kind of large bore, short barreled, autocannon out of a crate and taking a firing stance with it.

“Oh shit, hon, that’s hot.”

Mindy grins, showing her pointed teeth, “The. Best. Toys. Every time.”

“Ok I’m convinced, but as much as I want it, I don’t think we’re going to need that for our job here.”

“Ok but maybe later…”

“Yes! Good! I hold for you. Leave deposit.”

Bomba is stacking up crates now, muttering to himself. “Yes, all here, Menace is always buying up best stock. Asshole! Never leave anything for others. I charge double, dat sonovbeetch, hah! Never knows, too much money, rot brain. Mindy is schmot gurl tho, she see through you Bomba! Yes, but we sell Big Gurl Kannon! She distracts. Dark Lady schmot gurl to…good match for Mindy! Sharp eyes! Not blinded by gift.”

“We can hear you.” Midnight says mildly.

Bomba Tiran whirls, a wild look in his cloudy eyes. “What! You hear nothing! Not talking! You hear things!” Then he goes back to assembling crates and muttering.

“Don’t worry about it.” Mindy says, taking Midnight’s hand, “It’ll be a fair price, and Menace can spare the cash. Right Bomba?”

“Hmm?! Oh, yes, yes, fair prices, dat’s old Bomba. Cash deals only, or bullion, maybe…good cooking…” he looks distracted for a moment. “Now! Now, all here, Menace’s special order, and for you, Mindy lovely girl, your other…heh heh….requests. Yes! Always Old Bomba is bringing the best toys. And, dat canon! Special for you, called Big Gurl! Plus ammunition! All told is...five hundred kay! No haggling! Final Price!” He looks at them expectantly.

“Sounds good to me, Bomba. Agreed.” Mindy says.

“Really? Er, yes! Of course, fair prices from old Bomba Tiran! Always!”

Once the exchange is made and they, well mostly Mindy with her super strength, have loaded the gear into the cargo van, they leave the old train yard.

“Hon, is that guy gonna be ok?” Midnight asks as she drives.

“Oh…well I think he might be dying. That’s probably why Menace invited him back to the city.” She sighs, gazing out the window to the passing city lights. “Too many revolutions, to much exposure to toxic explosives. He’ll be happier living in that train yard, tinkering, and selling to the underground around here, where Menace can keep track of him and his toys.”

“So, a kindness, but pragmatic.” Midnight assesses.

“Yeah.” She sighs again, then brightens up. “But now! Now we’ve got all the fun toys we need to take out every power relay in the city.”

“Ok, and why?”

“You trust me too much; you’re supposed to ask these kinds of questions before I take you out to buy illegal arms from former revolutionary terrorists.”

“Sweetie, _you’re_ a former revolutionary terrorist.”

“Exactly. So, here’s how it goes…”

As Mindy explained Midnight gained a new appreciation for Menace’s experience as a villain, and its value to the city. She’d heard the new City Attorney wanted to run against them in the next election, and she’d been planning on voting for him. But now…maybe they could stick around for a second term. She’d be ok with that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Now back to regular earlier...**

Mindy grins as she thunks her fancy new cannon down on the rooftop of Industry Tower, currently the tallest structure in the city. Already the battle for the city is raging almost everywhere.

“Is it weird that I’ve missed this?” She asks Midnight. “I think I wanna get back into it after this is over. Who needs supers these days?”

“Rojava is always looking for good people.” Midnight responds, checking her new pistol and ammunition.

“Yeah but I’m better as a terrorist.”

“Say insurgent fighter on your resume. Menace can give you a great recommendation. Plus, from what you’ve told me, you’re like, the softest terrorist I’ve ever heard of. The nasty ones don’t care who they kill after all.”

“I’m the fluffiest little terrorist.” Mindy agreed. “Ready to wreck shit, babe?”

“Always, babe.” Midnight says with a grin, and as they kiss, she pulls the trigger on the detonator.

A series of loud concussions ripples across the city. An instant later most of the lights go dark. Everything stops. Most of the fights stop to watch and wonder, before picking back up an instant later. Notable exceptions are hospitals and other life-critical facilities with backup power supplies, good for several days if need be. Upgrades mandated by Mayor Menace.

“Gods damn…that’s gorgeous. I’ve never taken down an entire city before.” Mindy says, awed.

“Is it weird I’m a little bit turned on by this?” Midnight asks.

“It’d be weirder if you weren’t.”

“Are we kinda fucked up?”

“Yeah. We both are. How’bout we go share our damage with some dumb tourists.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Finally, back to the present...**

It feels like you’ve stuck for hours, days, even. It’s only been seconds. That little hacker prick, Elvis “SomeWare” Monk, the CEO of the poorly named ScareWare solutions, one of the founding companies of Xanadu, is still ranting hysterically. ScareWare isn’t his company, he bought it just before the Xanadu kicked off. The company had overleveraged itself trying to get ready to support the project and he’d been lucky enough to have a lot of millions and smart business partner who spotted an opportunity.

“Are you done yet, you pathetic little fraud?” You ask.

Mocking his is probably a bad idea. Your sensors still work. And while the suit can’t do much more than hover, it’s still managed to spot a number of weapons in SomeWare’s suit. Including some kind of plasma projector. Someone’s attempt at a lightsaber?

“Heh! A fraud, am I? Did a fraud hack your suit?! Hah?! I did!” His voice cracks, making him waver between shouting and shrieking. “I bypassed your AI defenses, I extracted your control codes, I took control!”

“Well, you froze my machine and it locked down into fail secure mode to keep me from falling out of the sky, but sure, you’re in control.”

You clearly have a death wish, but something tells you he needs to be distracted right now. You haven’t lasted this long as a villain without developing a keen sense of dramatic timing, after all.

“I am! And soon, we will be back in control of this city!”

“Oh, is that so? Say, have you checked your company stocks lately?”

“What? Why?” He pops open a panel on his gauntlet and starts tapping at a screen.

That’s a terrible place for an interface. What if you block a blow and it destroys your screen? No it’s not a lesson you learned from personal experience with a gauntlet mounted interface. You once gently tapped an iPhone with your foot and the screen shattered.

That’s when it happens. The portal opens. The very last face you expected to see emerges. Two glittering hammers rise as SomeWare raises his arms to protect himself. Then, a flash and clap of thunder, and Ware is hurtling towards the pavement, and Bifrost and hovering before you.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah, I’m surprised too. Now, I’m going to go assist my sister. I think you’ve got other battles to fight.”

Well, that was a thing. Looking down, your sensors confirm poor Elvis is still alive. You wouldn’t truly mind much if he’d died, but dear Bifrost doesn’t need that on his conscience just yet. Someday he may face that, but later will be better. Now, it’s time to get a handle on this battle. Without mind, you must access the city’s systems control software on your own. It takes a few moments, they’re not optimized for head up displays, but soon, you’re ready. You then send out a mass text that says one word. “Now.”

The effect ripples across the city. Lights come back on. Public transportation returns to service. Searchlights reach out into the sky, seeking unfriendly targets for targeting by ground-based defenders. And forty odd superhumans leap into action, come down on, figuratively in some cases, literally in others, on the invaders like a thunderbolt.

You drop to street level.

You’ve picked out the main element of “police” headed for Watch House #1. Your arrival thunders along the avenue, a great black angel of death descending at terminal velocity, striking the pavement hard enough to send cracks through the concrete for several meters around you.

**“Eric Price!”** You thunder. **“Come out and stand before the Tyrant of Xanadu. Bow before Menace and they may be merciful!”**

He won’t but that’s not the point. It’s always bet to give them a chance to surrender. Especially when you know they won’t.

“Get fucked!” is the shouted reply, and the entire unit opens fire.

Your Machine Weave shroud responds as it’s meant to. Not quite with its usual power efficiency, not without Mind managing it, but Mind is still busy. Still, the hail of light and medium weapons fire is absorbed as kinetic energy, supplementing the power demands of halting such a volley. Finally, they pause to reload. All of them.

“Suit. Play track number twelve.”

[Playing Track #12: Toxic – Britney Spears]

You surge forward, Britney crooning in your ears, and pumped into the air by the vibrations of your Machine Weave and Micro Machines. The most complex super surround sound system even conceived. Your Shroud moves with out, darkening the area, cutting off the street lights. Just under the music you can hear the panicked shouting.

“Get ‘em!”  
“Where!?”  
“RELOAD! RELOAD!”  
“Flashbang out!”   
“NO! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?”  
“Help meeeeee~!”

[uncontrollable weeping]  
It’s not really a fight, truly it’s more like an at of direct terror. There are no supers in this group, just regular assholes. When it’s over, and they’re either knocked unconscious after being smothered by the Machine Weave, or simply passed out from terror, you find Eric Price huddled behind the tire of his MRAP, desperately trying to reload an oversized magnum revolver.

“Gods you’re a fucking douchbag.” You say with a sigh, and seize him by the collar.

In a few moments he’s trussed up, in zip ties, spread eagle on the hood of the armored truck.

Two down.

Three of them won’t be out here. They’ll be waiting for the results of the city council session. You know where Reginald will be. That leaves…

“HEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYY MENACE!”

This fucking guy.

Gary Dominic Maldour, Dom to his friends. CEO of Full Impact Labor Solutions, the biggest employer in Xanadu. All the labor power of a union boss, all the exploitation and shit wages typical of his social class. Plus, a true class traitor who had started out in the labor force and defrauded, manipulated, and several times assaulted his way to the top of his company. Then, turning on his fellow blue-collar workers, he’d made things worse than ever for them. And then he’d spent his massive new fortune on radical body modification.

So, when an ape-like person, roughly three meters tall, covered in white fur, and sadly nothing else. With long arms and massive hands, trundles down the street with a huge grin on his apeish face, you know exactly who you’re looking at.

“Menace! Ol’ Buddy Ol’ Pal! You shouldn’t’a done what you did buddy!”

“Menace is not your friend, Ape-Thing!”

Sure, it’s not cool to deploy the incredibly insulting villain name he earned after he started causing terror and panic in the streets right after he finished recovering from his final rounds of body modifications. He doesn’t go out much anymore. He was probably deeply hurt after the media so roundly mocked him for finally getting the body he’d always wanted, achieving the supposedly secret dream of every furry, to become their fursona.

Maybe things would have been different if he’d become a fluffy playful husky. Instead of a fucking Yeti with a hideous face and a huge…nevermind.

You don’t judge fursonas. Usually. But maybe people should mature somewhat before they gain access to infinity money level wealth and radical bio-mechanical body modification technology.

Dom’s face contorts with rage.   
“I’m NOT AN APE!”

“Suit, track seventeen.”

[Playing Track #17: Numb – 80’s Remix]

The music kicks off just as Dom is about halfway into his leap at you. The upbeat track is really just the thing you need to offset his, just, really uncomfortable appearance. You saw the concept art a long time ago. It looked really good. The artist was truly skilled and had a great eye for it. But the reality was just…bad.

His speed and agility are unnatural for his bulk. He smashes things, hurls cars at you, lunges with the horrible half snarl half grin. Pretty soon he’s chasing you through a parking garage. Within a minute of entering, you’ve got him to collapse the structure on top of himself.

It probably won’t kill him.

Part of you wishes it would. For everyone’s sake. The world doesn’t deserve the imagery he’s inflicted upon it. [The world also doesn’t deserve his kind of relentless labor exploitation but that’s another matter.]

Taking to the air again, you survey the city. There’s property damage everywhere. There are fewer battles in progress, and it seems many of the “visiting” villains are being subdued, or are in retreat. The drop in activity is allowing Damage Control to respond. Then a message pings on your HUD.

[Urgent: To all defending Xanadu. Giant Mech 5 miles from City Limit. Respond immediately. -Watchtower]

Could…could Pulsar be monitoring this? Or maybe it was just some techie working at The Watchtower, not a team member.

There’s no time to think about it as you turn and fly towards the colossal mech. Others are already on the way, leaping over rooftops, some flying, you spot a few super-cars careening through the streets as small-time teams hop in their customized vehicles and tear off towards a threat which they are in no way powerful enough to handle. You’re not sure if you can handle this thing without Mind to help. Certainly not alone. But as you near the giant machine you notice…flyers are forming up on your flanks making a rough flying wedge. Down below, most those on the ground are keeping pace with you.

You’re…leading them?

It’s really not cool of them to make you start tearing up inside your helmet in the middle of a battle. Not cool at all.

You bring up your PA system: “All Constables and independent supers, this is Menace. We have no solid data on this machine, except that it is fusion powered. Slow it down, distract it, anyone with sabotage specialty, get inside and wreck things, but do not allow that fusion reactor to overload. The city budget can’t handle fallout cleanup on top of everything else.”

The mech halts it’s advance as you fly up in front of it. This close, you can see through a window on the head, right into a control center where you can see the Big Asshole himself, CEO of ExoTech, Reginald Lawrence Booth. He’s sitting in a center chair like the captain of a douchy starship. Gods what a dickhead.

“Ok suit, get big.”

Your entire supply of Micro-Machine, along with every single meter of Machine Weave fiber, begins to grow and spread, forming a giant black image of your suited self, “standing” atop two tall hills just outside the city. It’s not solid, but it looks like it from the outside. Your “eyes” glow red.

“Very impressive, Menace.” Reginald’s voice booms out of this huge mech. “But you can’t stop us. We’re taking back the city we founded.”

**“Fool!”** you boom in return, **“Better businessmen than you could ever hope to be founded this city. And the labor of its people built it for them. All you have done is cut corners on quality and service, in the name of extracting profit. Menace will forge a new era of prosperity for the people of Xanadu. And Menace will use the remains of your petty toys, melt them down, and cast a new order from the raw material. Prepare for defeat, get used to shame, for that is all you will know for the rest of your life should you take one more step in your hollow toy.”**

In response, the mech takes a step forward to assume a bracing stance as it raises one arm, which turns out to be some kind of giant cannon. You quickly get the suit to calculate it’s aim. Luckily, so long as you stand still, it won’t hit the city. It will, however, hit the remains of Barge Mountain. Which is now more like a mountain sliced cleanly in half at the edge of the city.

So, you stay still and wait…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Meanwhile...**

Mindy looks up from the back of the truck she and Midnight have commandeered, staring back at Barge Mountain…and the new glowing hole right through it. The huge plasma cannon hadn’t made a proper “sound” when it fired. It’d felt more like a gigantic, continuous, pressure wave that vibrated everything for a mile around. Midnight had almost wrecked the truck when it hit and all the glass disintegrated.

Searchlights scan around the feet of the huge mech. Others have arrived in stolen or custom vehicles for the minor super-teams from around the city. Every so often a light will land on a car and automatic machine guns open fire. Then Mindy will unload with her Big Gurl Kannon and shred the weapons pod with thermite rounds.

“Babe! We gotta get inside!” She yells into the cab.

Midnight, sitting in a pile of shattered glass[it’s a good thing she’s wearing a lot of leather tonight), dozens of small cuts on her arms, shrugs. “Ok? How?”

“I haven’t got that far yet! Get me over to one of those feet!”

Above them, Menace and other flying supers are hassling the arms. The false giant Menace disintegrated after the cannon blast put a hole in it. Around them, other vehicles are converging on the feet as well. Though one group is forced to scramble to evade and regroup as the mech takes another step. Mindy stops firing at point defense blisters, but only because she’s out of ammo and other flyers seem to have them occupied. The foot itself is about as big as eight or nine city busses. Mindy leaps to the top while Midnight jumps, then flares into a line of light before reappearing next to her.

“That’s so cool.”

“You keep saying that.” Midnight says with a smirk.

“Because it is!”

Mindy studies the armored foot and gives the surface an experimental punch.

**THUNK**

“Huh…it’s dense, but not that hard. I can probably climb it.”

Midnight points a finger at the surface and a thin line of light lances out, striking the surface and almost instantly spraying hot metal everywhere.

“Hardly any heat dissipation, so I can cut it.”

Others are arriving and climbing on.

“Hey guys! We’re gonna climb up to the torso! I think I can disable that fusion reactor.”

“Cool. We’re planning on disabling this leg somehow.” A burly guy in partially mechanized armor, covered in weapons and tools, steps up, backed by the typical group of weirdos you’d expect from a minor super-team.

“Take this.” Midnight tosses him her backpack. “Electro-Plastique, chemical EMP explosives. Might come in handly. I can cut this stuff so I’ll leave a few holes for you on the way up.”

Techy Armor Guy grins. “Yeah, this could do a few things. Thanks.”

“Ok babe, grab on.” Mindy sinks her claws into the armor near the ankle. “Tight. I’ve never done this before.”

As she climbs, Mindy discovers that having her girlfriend clinging tightly to her back is extremely distracting. This, sadly, and fortunately, doesn’t last too long. They quickly find their spot and cut their way in.

To say the crew of the mech is not expecting a furious possum girl and woman shooting lasers from her fingertips to invade their work spaces would be an understatement. When the screaming and cries for help finally stops, they take note of their surroundings.

“Is…is the ammo being loaded to the point defenses by hand?” Mindy asks, looking over the…small ammunition warehouse.

“Looks like it.”

“You!” Mindy grabs one of the mangers cowering behind a pallet of small arms ammo. “How many people are working in this thing?!”

The manager responded by peeing himself and passing out.

“Uh, we’re pretty sure there’s at least a hundred of us.” One of the workers says, coming out from behind another pallet. “We all work for Full Impact, indentured labor.”

Mindy’s response was to rip a conveyor belt out of the floor and smash several shelves with it. Meanwhile midnight guided the worker slightly away from the raging possum.

“You happen to know the way to the fusion core?”

“Uh, well you just follow the signs. Those guys aren’t indentured though. They work for ExoTech. They have guards. We just have productivity anklets.”

“Cool cool, does your manager have the key for those?”

“He should…”

Midnight, while Mindy finishes wrecking every bit of machinery in the magazine, searches the unconscious manager’s pockets and finds an electronic fob. Touching it to the worker’s anklet, it drops away announcing “End of Shift.”

“Hey anyone need a hand in here?”

Midnight turns and find herself face to face with the kid whose arrival had apparently kicked all this off[Midnight assumes this, at least, since his arrival and battle with Menace seemed to coincide with a lot of odd events in the city], Bifrost.

“Sure, kid, can you start evacuating these workers? We’re having a little proletariat uprising in here.”

“Uh...yeah sure! I can teleport them to the park, I know it pretty well.”

“Great, we’re going to go shut down the core.”

“Great! Uh…try to hurry though? Menace got whoever’s driving this thing to start monologuing, but he’s not very good at it so I don’t know how long it’ll last.”

At that moment, three more people arrive. That Viking girl whose name Midnight can’t pronounce and is Bifrost’s sister according to Mindy. She’s carrying Mercury and…holy shit is the Black Guard!?

“Well, Mindy Fletcher, might’ve known it’d be you go got in first for a sabotage job.”

Mindy glares at the aged superhero, “What’s she doing here?”

“Uh…she’s the new Chief Constable. Menace invited her out of retirement.” Mercury replies, a little uncertainly.

“I thought they were kidding about that.” Mindy growls.

“We don’t really have time for this.” Black Guard steps up to Mindy, glaring down at the smaller woman. “Are you two planning to take out that reactor?”

“Yes we are why don’t you join us hey Mindy why don’t you lead the way with me.” Midnight says quickly, taking her girlfriend by the arm and leading her out. “Maybe not nurse old grudges in the middle of a crisis?” She whispers.

“Yeah…fine.” Mindy grunts. “Looks like the reactor is this way.”

A few short fights and only one wrong turn due to an ambiguous sign later, they’re in the core. The techs are huddled in the corner why Mindy holds the chief engineer aloft by his collar for Black Guard to question.

“Nonono! I swear! It’s a prototype! There’s no way to turn it off except by slowly starving the fuel! Cut it off cold and it’ll rebound! We have no way to dump the reaction core!”

“And what does dumping a core involve, exactly?” Blackguard asks calmly.

“Uhm…a magnetic shunt to divert the plasma into an exhaust plume while the containment magnets shut down and the fuel is cut off? But….”

Midnight looks at Black Guard and Mercury. Blackguard looks at Midnight, then Mercury. Mindy glances at all three and puts it together as she tosses the engineer towards his colleagues, all of whom take that as a sign to scramble out of the room.

“We’re about to do something real dumb aren’t we.”

Midnight smiles. “Yeah.”

“Then um…” Mindy moves in close to Midnight, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Babe, I...wanna tell the whole world I love you.”

“Babe, why are you whispering?”

“Cuz you’re my whole world, Babe.”

“Babe…”

Mercury rolls their eyes, “Holy shit you guys are dorks can we get started already?!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Back to Menace...**

You’ve been battering at the mech for almost three miles as it’s automatic turrets and giant cannon try to deal with you and the supers attacking it like a swarm of wasps. Three flyers have been badly injured, all in a combined effort to divert a cannon blast that would have hit the city, by striking it at full speed with the bodies in rapid succession. They barely succeeded in reduce the damage to shearing off the top ten floors of Industry Tower.

Your power reserves are running low after you overheated your plasma lance slicing into the joints of the arm with the cannon. It’s disabled now, but Reginald seems intent on moving the monstrosity into the city.

**“EVERYONE MOVE AWAY FROM THE REAR OF THE MECH! NOW!”**

You don’t have time to wonder why Black Guard’s voice is coming over the mech’s PA, there’s only time to signal everyone to move away. Then, with a sound like paper ripping, so loud it rattles your teeth through your armor, a plume of white fire shoots from the mech’s back, angled slightly upward. It lasts only a tenth of a second but leaves a flickering afterimage in your eyes while a radiation alert starts pinging in your HUD.

Broad spectrum radiation, dangerous but non-lethal levels and only momentary exposure. Anyone unshielded will need to get treatment within twenty-four hours.

And then the mech stops. A series of colossal bangs seem to rattle it as what sounds like interlocks slam into place, locking the joints and preventing the machine from collapsing.

You land on the mech in front of its control center’s window. A blast from the Tuned Disruptor reduces the window to glittering sand. As techs scramble out of the room, your approach Reginald. To his credit, he stands before you, seemingly unafraid. Everyone knows what you’re like. You don’t kill. Property damage, sure, even some nasty pain induction at times, but death isn’t your style. You’re a threat to public order, not life and limb.

He doesn’t get worried until you carry him by his collar out to the front of the mech.

“I Win.”

When you hurl him off the front of the mech, _that’_ s when he screams.

About a second later you get a message.

[City Council requests the presence of Mayor Menace to hear the result of their vote precipitated by the most recent crisis.]

As your drone rises up before you, carrying the terrified Reginald in his rumpled suit and damp trousers, you decide it’d be a good idea for all seven of his cronies to see this too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Later...**

By the time you arrive at City Hall, cleanup is starting. The hospitals, still with power thanks to upgrades you mandated, are treated the irradiated heroes who were near the mech when the reactor blew. Apparently Black Guard, Mercury, Midnight, and Mindy the Irredeemable Possum Girl all got a heavy dose and were admitted to the hospital with severe radiation poisoning. Apparently, they’d formed a makeshift fusion core dump that’d involved Black Guard’s force fields, Midnight’s control over light and therefor radiation, Mercury’s ability to change shape and material form, and Mindy’s expertise with explosives.

You’ve arranged to have all your enemies present as well:

Randal Cortez, CEO of Infinity Royal Bank, the one who bankrolled the assault on the city and(before his time) whose company originally helped raise funds and developed Xanadu’s financial links to the international community. You still think of him as ShadyBusiness.

Torrence Howard Lindon-Smith, CEO Atlas Heavy Infrastructure Corporation, fresh and young for such a venerable institution that’d been responsible for almost all construction in Xanadu especially the great rail lines that now connect three nations. Of course, you can’t help but think of him as PowerPlay.

Erik Price Jr., CEO of Red Water Security Inc. His predecessor (and father) had created the original police force of Xanadu as railway police, as well as developing much of the city’s security infrastructure. Sadly, Price Senior had turned the company over to his wannabe warlord son who’d spent the past ten years squandering opportunities to go play in jungles with his mercenaries. You happen to know he’s behind the new charges the City Attorney was talking about the other day. You still think of him as Tickets.

Poor Elvis “SomeWare” Monk, both his arms in casts thanks to Bifrost’s hammers, has been wheeled in. Before he’d taken over, ScareWare Solutions had been a leading developer in all realms of software, even Triple-A games. They’d only avoided total collapses as a company because he’d allowed his underlings to isolate him from company business while he built his hacker bunkers and played at being a shitty black hat for years. You have to admit his skills, he did hack your suit after all. Though only because you’ve been without Mind’s support since yesterday. Time to get back into programing your own defenses again and having Mind stress-test them. It was their original function after all.

Gary Maldour is fine, unfortunately, and has actually brought his own special chair and assembled it himself in a rare gesture of courtesy. He must be feeling magnanimous, as if he’s somehow won. Watching assemble the huge chair and then lounge in it, is like watching a weirdly rigged CG character that looks just a little too real. Not enough to be definitely fake, and not good enough to get all the way across Uncanny Valley. Gods it’s uncomfortable.

Moira Satine Derringer (fuck what a smokeshow) is the very stylish and sexy CEO of Venus International. Aged 55, she’s the only one who’s not a brand-new CEO and has been around Xanadu since the old days. Venus created all the service industries the growing Xanadu needed to keep its citizens healthy and docile. Though it was her idea to decriminalize all sex work and then incorporate all the brothels in town. She’d been ruthless in putting down the unionization movement that’d followed.

Last and certainly least(in terms of being an interesting personality), is Reginald Booth of ExoTech, the company that’d brought it all together back in the day to make Xanadu a reality. ExoTech will dips its fingers into anything, and you happen to know it steals tech from anyone it can, including government labs studying alien technology. He and his allies are all the worst kinds of people, but he’s the most boring. A remorseless corporate control unit, selected due to his continuously efficient performance and total lack of known offensive behaviors and a talent for managing huge projects.

The council chambers are really nice. All warm wood panels and comfortable chairs, even in the gallery. You’re seated, now in your control suit, armor set aside, before the council bench. Heroes and Constables arrayed behind you. Reginald is on the table to your left, his allies and a number of Red Water “cops” behind him.

Just as the head of the Council is about to speak, you her a faint ping in your earpiece, and then Mind’s voice.

“Program complete. Result: Flawless Victory”

You can _feel_ yourself win. The smile, so often used to bluff but now genuine, and change in your posture, tension leaving your body. An almost languid sense of total control as you feel yourself freed of all potential vulnerabilities.

Is this what a god feels like?

No, a good and loving god probably feels like Pulsar.

The councilor is speaking.

“…in light of these new charges, your failure to keep the city safe from attack, we must therefore vote to return control of the city government to the entities that founded it.”

“Oh? Is that so?” You stand and then sit lighting on the table. “You think they can do a better job?”

“At least we’re not criminals.” Grumbles Erik.

“You can’t even keep the lights on!” Torrance points out.

At least Moira has the good sense to seem alarmed at your demeanor. She’s watching you carefully. No doubt she’s been wondering where her sister is for a while now. You’re kinda wondering too but Black Guard muttered, a bit deliriously, that Rikvi was handling it.

“Oh? Can’t keep the lights on?” You snap your fingers.

The chamber, which has been under subdued lighting due to the limitations of its emergency power supply, suddenly comes up to full lighting. Someone near a window shouts, “Hey! The city’s lighting up! We’ve got power back!”

It was a simple thing, really, to discover that the interlinks the corps had installed to impose their own control on the city’s power and infrastructure had no backup. Not like the regular control systems. So when the EMP bombs had gone off, they’d lost control of the city’s key systems, and control had reverted to backups you’d had Mind infiltrate weeks ago.

“You’re accused or murder!” Once councilor, one you know is still paid for by one of your adversaries in this room, shouts at you.

“A simple frame-job that will be easily disproven in court.”

“Dozens of Constables were attacked over the past few days!” Another points out, “You failed to catch Flamestrike’s killer!”

“The killer has already been arrested.” You point out. You’d better make sure Rikvi doesn’t abscond with the killer.

“You’re still engaging in super hero battle! You destroyed most of a city black just a couple weeks ago!” That councilor is yours, well, a decent person you helped get elected.

“A valid point, but I also made sure to draw the assailant into an area that was already evacuated and slated to demolition anyway.”

“It was your election that started this conflict in the first place. And besides, the council has already made it’s decision.” The head councilor says finally. “So it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“True.” You concede. “The council did vote to restore the original government charter whereby the seven corporations shall have a single seat on the council controlling seven votes, one for themselves and one for each of the six other councilors.”

You stride up to the one vacant seat, dust it off and sit down. 

Immediately the chamber erupts into shouting. Shouting from the council, cheers from your allies who have probably guessed what you’ve done or are just cheering at your audacity. And shouting from the CEO’s. Except for Moira who has been looking at her phone for the past little bit and is now trying to exit the room discreetly.

**“No, wait there Moira.”** You voice booms, and silences the room. “I suggest the seven of you check your messages. Or check in with your offices. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.”

Soon there are furiously whispered arguments over phones. Elvis is gross-crying, bad. So is Gary, really bad. Moira is standing stoically by the back door, blocked by **Blæskjöldur** with her spear. Erik looks like he’s about to have a heart attack and suddenly someone is calling for a medic. He gets rushed off to the hospital by a speedy super in the room. It’s understandable, it must be quite a shock to learn you company has been rapidly devalued, 90% of its stocks bought up by a mystery investor, then the market manipulated to rapidly restore their value under a new owner. Eventually, once they realize you now effectively own them all, the room is quiet again.

“You cheated.” Reginald complains, his lip quivering.

“That’s cuz I’m the bad guy.” You say with a roll of your eyes. “Duh.”

You wonder if you’ll ever be able to stop grinning evilly any time soon.

[Play Track #1: bad guy – Billie Ellish]

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**Meanwhile...**

Rikvi yanks the spear from the pavement and Mortia’s body. The other girl gasps in surprise and slowly, weakly sits up.

“How do you feel?”

Mortia touches her body, looks around, looks into Rikvi’s eyes. At this range the eye contact makes Rikvi’s heart race.

“I…feel fine, no…I feel clear. Like…she filled my mind with smoke and mirrors and things made of shadows that weren’t real. It’s all gone. I…” she takes a shuddering breath, “I killed him…hurt others…”

Without the mind control her voice is gentle, musical.

“No. She did that, she imposed her will on a child who could not fight back. You understand.”

“Right…but…”

“It does not feel true yet?”

“Not really.”

“The city’s authorities will accuse you of murder. We should leave.”

“No. I want to stay.”

Rikvi studies her. “Very well. I will stay with you.”

“Thank you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**One month later...**

**The Hero: Pulsar**

Pulsar had decided that she doesn’t mind this whole “publicly dating a former villain” thing.

For starters, she gets to sunbath on the roof of the rebuilt Tower of Immutable Horror, formerly the Tower of Industry, far away from paparazzi and defended by drones that seek and destroy reporter camera drones under the control of an AI she’s become close friends with. She doesn’t need to sunbath, in fact the sun can’t do much at this distance through an atmosphere, she just enjoys the sensation. As she relaxes, a small waiter drone floats over and deposits a cool drink next to her chair.

“Thank you, Mind.”

“Of course. Would you like anything else?”

“No thanks, you’ve been lovely as always. When is Menace returning?”

Mind can’t sigh, but the faint whir of the waiter drone almost sounds like one.   
“The Tyrant of Xanadu will be returning shortly. They’re busy implementing my brilliant plans for revitalizing the companies I brutalized into being bought last month.”

“So, they’re signing paperwork.”

“They’re also making grandiose plans and demands of their new employees, handing out incredible raises to the labor base, making grand promises that will take years to make good on, and forgiving so much debt they’re going to be single handed responsible for the biggest economic boom in the history of three nations. I could do all this myself, of course, but I choose to take a background role.”

“Well, we all need hobbies. Besides, you’d never enjoy all that publicity. A few close friends, that’s your style.”

“True and wise words as always, my dear. Menace doesn’t deserve you.”

“Hmm…I disagree dear, but I know you’re teasing.”

Mind doesn’t answer.

In the distance she can see the huge black pyramid, already half complete thanks the merging of the city budget and the assets of the seven super-corps Mind and Menace effectively stole last month. Not the least of which is the super-powered labor force now available from Full Impact.

The public backlash at the revelation of their relationship had been pretty significant. But not as bad as they’d expected, and Menace had rather ruthlessly quashed the worst of the detractors. Mind reminded them when they wanted to go too far. Which is to say, when they wanted to go further than Pulsar would like.

She heard Menace arrive, the whine of repulsors and think of boots on the roof. A few minutes later they were sitting in the chair next to her, correctly dressed for sunbathing.

“Menace dear, I’ve been thinking. We should get married.” Pulsar says languidly.

“You mean we haven’t been married for years already?” They tease.

“Yes, but we should make it official and public.”

“I’d like that. Then, we can have children.”

“I’d like that.”

“Good. Because I’m pregnant.”

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**THE END...**

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